


I Never Should Have Answered the Door

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-09-30
Updated: 2001-09-30
Packaged: 2018-11-20 13:12:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11336232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived atThe Basement, which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address onThe Basement's collection profile.





	I Never Should Have Answered the Door

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

I Never Should Have Answered the Door by Merri-Todd Webster

Title: "I Never Should Have Answered the Door"  
Author/pseudonym: Merri-Todd Webster  
Pairing: Umm... M/Sk, M/Sc, M/Sc/Sk, Sk/K, M/K... did I forget anything?  
Rating: NC-17  
Status: New, complete, insane.  
Archive: Yes to DitB, others crazy enough to want this, please ask.  
Feedback offlist at   
Series/Sequel: Sequel to "I Don't Remember How It Happened" and "I Can't Believe I'm Doing This". Available at http://www.ravenswing.com/~lonchura/fanfic/xfiles.html  
Disclaimers: I treat them better than you do, Chris.  
Notes: This is all JiM's fault. The idea for this monster was spawned during an AIM conversation with her, and the sucker would never have gotten written without her patient cheerleading and careful beta.   
Dedicated to her, and to my stepdaughter, Alice, who makes parenting fun.  
Warnings: Het sex, schmoop, dirty diapers, possible spew....  
Summary: BWAHAHAHAH!!!

* * *

I Never Should Have Answered the Door,  
or, And Alex Makes Five  
by Merri-Todd Webster  
September 1999 - September 2001

I never should have answered the door. If I'd known what was on the other side of it, I wouldn't have opened it. But then, if the hapless dude in the horror movie knew that the slimy, scary, tentacled monster was on the other side of the door, he wouldn't have opened it, either, right? Okay, so it was not that bad. But almost.

It was a Friday afternoon in August, and I was the only one home at the time. Except for the dog, the fish, and the budgie, that is, so I was the only one capable of answering the door. I peeked out through the curtains, saw the big brown bulk of the UPS truck and our usual driver, Henry, who looks like Matt Frewer with less hair--the guy who played Max Headroom, that is--so I opened up, thinking, Great, it's either my book club or the last order from Good Vibrations, with the extra-large condoms.

Henry had a funny look on his face. "Hey, Mulder...."

"Hey, Max." I always call him that, even though I had to explain to him who Max Headroom was. Not a sci fi fan, Henry. Actually, he taught history before quitting and going to work for UPS, so he could afford to have kids on one salary.

"You been expecting a big delivery?"

"Big? No. Book club stuff, the usual."

"Well...." He turned around, looked over his shoulder at the truck, then back at me. "I've got about twenty boxes here with Dr. Dana's name on them. Big boxes."

Twenty boxes? What the fuck? "Who's it from?"

He consulted his electronic pad--I want one of those for myself. "Says here, M. Scully."

Oh! "That would be Dana's mom. It must be okay, then--she sends us stuff sometimes." But twenty boxes' worth?!? What gives?

"Okay then." Henry went back to the truck and started piling boxes on his hand truck. I insisted on helping him, and we got it all in the house pretty quickly.

That was around 3:30, I guess. When Walter got home around 5:00, I was still unpacking the fucking boxes.

"Is this the Good Vibes delivery?" my former boss asked, deadpan.

"Fuck no." I let him give me a quick hi-honey-I'm-home kiss while I ripped open yet another box with the cutter. "Looks like some kind of sick joke."

Frowning--still a pretty scary sight, despite being out of the Bureau for nearly ten years--Walter aborted his trip to the kitchen for the usual beer and sat down on the couch next to me. "Jesus." He took in the wreckage of the living room--boxes sitting just about everywhere, some of them six feet square, in an ankle-deep ocean of every kind of packing material known to man, and a few that I thought must be extraterrestrial in origin.

"Really." I pulled out a heap of bubble wrap, tossed it aside, and pulled out--a big box of disposable diapers. "It's all baby stuff. Diapers, clothes, toys, tote bags, food--everything you could possibly need, plus a few things I can't imagine a need for--and I've got a good imagination. Everything but the baby." I looked at him soberly. "Addressed to Dana."

"That is a sick joke."

"Yeah." Even this long after, Scully's inability to have children was a sore point, a kind of phantom pain, I think. And she'd mentioned, the last time we were together, that she thought she was seeing the first signs of menopause.

"We've got to clean all this up before she gets home." He got up, as if he were about to start doing just that.

"And you know what's *really* sick? According to the UPS manifest, it came from her mother."

"That's a lie." The old Skinner growl was back.

"You know I know it." I realized I was sitting there holding the latest box of diapers. I tossed it aside. "Fuck--what're we gonna do?"

I heard the key in the lock and decided the best thing to do was panic. Scully was home early.

The redhaired light of my life came limping in, her right forearm wrapped in bandages. There was a little spot of blood on the bandage.

In a heartbeat, Walter and I were all over her, touching her and asking questions, taking her jacket and her briefcase, sitting her down and taking off her shoes.

"I'm fine, Mulder. No, really, Walter, it's just a flesh wound." She sighed, and the sigh turned into a yawn. Her head fell back against the couch and her eyes closed with a little slamming noise. "Joey Thornton's kid, God help him, got hold of a gun and decided to hold up the 7-11. While I happened to be in there getting some bottled water. He just grazed me. Really."

Scully raised her head and looked around. "Oh my God. What happened here?"

We told her.

Dinner was horrible. Our Friday night dinners are usually the rowdiest of the week, even if one of us has to work Saturday. It's my night to cook, which means I order something in, set the table, and spread it all out, and somebody usually rents a movie on the way home. One weekend Scully brought home something called _Truly Madly Deeply_ with Alan Rickman, Walter turned up with _Absolute Power_, and I was all set to watch _Dune_, which I own. Nobody had to work the next day, so we watched all three of them, in bed. I was the only one who held out to the end of _Dune_, my reward for which was watching Kyle MacLachlan and Sting duel half-naked. I had some weird dreams that night, let me tell you....

Tonight there was silence. Icy, frozen silence. God, it was like the time Scully and I were... estranged, for lack of a better word--I still don't understand what happened there. She kept her eyes on her plate, asked us politely to pass her things, and said nothing. After dinner she headed for the bathroom for a long soak in the tub. That's not abnormal, but I could hear her crying in there.... I knew it wouldn't do any good to try to go in. Walter and I kept giving each other helpless looks while we tried to watch some Schwarzenegger film Scully despised. After way too long, I heard her go to bed and slam the door.

I guess it's no wonder I slept with Walt that night. We each have our own bedroom, but only Walter has a king-sized bed because his is the bed we share. We wrapped around each other and shared the comfort Scully wouldn't let us give her.

*****

It was, I think, one of the worst days of my life. Well, my life once the conspiracy was exposed, the aliens defeated, the X-Files closed.... It was nothing compared to being abducted and used like a packet of seeds for the garden, or being confined in an alien refrigerator in Antarctica and used as an incubator for a hostile life-form. It did, however, make being winged by that stupid Thornton boy seem like the high point of my day.

I just wasn't prepared for how much it would hurt. I never expected to be hurt that badly ever again. But it was like a slap in the face, to be reminded so blatantly, so elaborately, of the one thing I wanted and couldn't have. We'd tried. In the first two or three years after we'd all left the Bureau, Walter and I had gone through every indignity a fertility clinic has to offer. Mulder and I went back to the East Coast under assumed names and did the same. And there was nothing they could do for me. They couldn't even explain why I had no ova--not surprising--let alone give me any more of them. I got tired of the bafflement behind their compassionate looks, and we stopped trying. I had Walter, I had Mulder, I had Budgerella the Budgie and Moose the Dog and the Happy Fish, and I had all our wonderful neighbors in the town of Kroeber, Oregon. I could live without a child.

As long as nobody reminded me of it.

I got through the evening by retreating into my pain. I didn't say anything--all night. Not one word, except for, "Could I have the chicken, please?" I wasn't going to lie by giving them the old, "I'm fine" routine, so I just didn't say anything. I got through dinner as best I could, and then I went and had a long hot bath. I cried in the bathtub, and then I went to bed in my own bedroom and cried myself to sleep.

I had to go in to work a few hours the next day, to catch up on the paperwork, so that took my mind off the incident. I knew my men would clean up all the boxes and put them away, give them away to someone who needed baby supplies. Kroeber's not a big town--it wouldn't be hard to find someone who needed a hand, and the hand needed would always be given. I went in early, got breakfast on the way--creamed chipped beef, my childhood favorite. Fox and Walter would have applauded me for its high fat, salt, and cholesterol content, but I needed comfort food in the worst way. Then I worked straight through without lunch, so I got home at about 1:50.

To find Alex Krycek sitting in my living room.

I didn't even think about drawing my gun. I just did it--and stood there blinking like a fish, my mouth slightly open. Because he was holding... a baby. Alex Krycek was holding a baby.

Walter and Mulder were both giving me deer-in-the-headlights looks. Krycek, however, was giving me a look I'd never seen before. Not on his face. I couldn't be sure what it meant. But I didn't want to hurt the baby.

He was cradling the child in his arms, a bundle of blue and white blankets, holding the baby and rocking it as if he did it all the time. I hadn't seen Krycek in... what, almost ten years, and here he was rocking a baby. What is the world coming to? There were lines in his face like the lines in Mulder's--and in mine--and thin streaks of silver in the black hair at his temples. He looked as tired as I felt. Slowly, I walked into the center of the room. Walter was off to the left of me on the couch, and Mulder was to my right, in the armchair, and Krycek and the baby were straight ahead. In the rocker, of course.

"I'm sorry, Scully. I didn't mean for the packages to get here ahead of the baby. UPS didn't get hung up in the same traffic I did."

Moose was sitting next to Krycek, sitting right at his knee with her long, drippy tongue hanging out almost to the floor. I couldn't help wondering why she hadn't ripped his other arm off yet--Moose is mostly bull mastiff, possibly with some Rottweiler thrown in. But he was holding a baby. And he'd just apologized to me for something. This wasn't making sense. *He'd* sent all those packages?

"What?"

Krycek stood up, slowly. "I meant to get here first, with the baby, and then for the packages to follow." He swallowed. "So you'd have everything you need." He took a small step forward. "Wouldn't you like to hold her?"

My hand twitched fiercely, trying to get back to my gun. "What for? Because I'm a woman? Because I can't have one of my own and so I'll take anything I can get?"

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mulder flinch, but Krycek didn't waver. He was actually looking me in the eye, something I don't think he'd ever done before. "No, Scully. Because she's yours."

"It's true, Scully." That was Mulder. He rattled a sheaf of papers. "He has the proof."

I didn't say anything. I just held out my arms, and Krycek put the baby in my arms, neatly and carefully, and smoothed back the blankets from her face with a black-gloved hand. "She doesn't have a name yet," he said softly, almost in a whisper, "except for Scully. You're her mother. I have proof."

She was very, very young, still a newborn, but a healthy newborn, warm and solid in my arms. Her skin was a deep pink, and her soft, fragile skull was dusted all over with short, strawberry-red fuzz. The same fuzz you can see in baby pictures of me, and Missy, and Bill. Charlie's the sport, he's dark like Mom. Her eyes were closed, but her little mouth opened and closed a few times, working shapelessly. I smoothed back the blankets more. She was dressed in a pastel green sleeper with a little yellow duck on the breast. Her tiny, perfect hands were curled into soft fists.

Before I knew what I was doing, I pressed my lips to her forehead. I felt her satiny skin and drowned in that sweet baby smell. Tears welled up my eyes and I felt so dizzy, as if I really were drowning. "How... why?"

Krycek retreated as Walter came and put his arms around me. I was swaying dangerously on my feet. Walter steered me to the couch, next to Mulder, and sat down on my other side. Krycek sat down again, leaning on the arm of the chair, and Moose breathed on him heavily with concern.

"I'm sorry I have to ask this, but--I've been driving for most of the last two days, plus taking care of the baby--I'm wiped. Before I start really answering the questions, could I have some coffee, maybe something to eat?"

After a moment, Walter got up. "Okay," he said, and headed for the kitchen. The baby cooed and stirred, scrunching up her face. "It must be that time," Krycek said, looking at his watch. He bent down--slowly, watching me the whole time--and rummaged in a big black knapsack at his feet, coming out with a bottle of formula. "I've gotta warm this up."

So a few minutes later, we were all sitting in the dining room instead of the living room. Krycek sat at the head of the table, drinking coffee and wolfing leftover chicken rice casserole Walter had heated up. I was on his left, giving the baby the bottle of formula. Mulder sat across from me, eating bread pudding for no good reason, and Walter sat on my left, with a cup of coffee for himself.

Krycek didn't talk while he ate, but he ate fast. When he'd scraped the last bit of rice out of the bowl, he got up, took his bowl and fork to the kitchen, and came back with the coffee pot. He refilled his mug and then passed the pot to Walter. "Thank you," he said, and stifled a burp. The baby gurgled, and I saw she'd drunk almost all the formula.

"She has a good appetite," Krycek said. "And she's a good sleeper, too. Pretty quiet, so far, but she's only two weeks old."

"Two weeks? Why have you separated a two-week-old baby from her mother?"

"*You're* her mother, Scully," he said earnestly. He was looking me in the eye again, which made me very nervous. "Baby Scully is the very last product of the Consortium's genetic engineering wing. The product of your ova which were taken from you. And once she was born, I made sure she was the very last product." He showed his teeth in a sharklike smile.

"Who's the father?"

"We are, apparently." Mulder sounded deceptively calm. He looked at Krycek. "That *is* what the printouts were saying, right? That some of my genes *and* some of Walter's were combined with Dana's?"

Krycek nodded and sipped his coffee. "Piece of cake for the Consortium's scientists. It was harder to convince them to do it than it was for them to do it."

"But you convinced them," I said flatly. He bared his teeth at me again.

"Yes. They still needed money for their research. I promised it to them. Anyone can be bought--almost anyone." He glanced at Mulder.

Krycek turned away and started rummaging in the knapsack again. He piled a number of things on the table and then went through them, one by one. "A sworn affidavit from the surrogate mother. A video confirming the affidavit, from the surrogate mother. Mulder's got the lab records already. Baby Scully is yours, Scully, and Mulder's and Skinner's, and she's healthy and completely human." He said that with a straight face and looked at me without blinking.

The baby hiccuped, and at once Krycek dived into the knapsack. He handed me a towel. "You'll want to put this on your shoulder while you burp her. She can really let loose."

For a moment I was completely distracted by an absurd mental image: Alex Krycek, dressed all in black as usual, a gun in one hand and the baby in the other, with the little white towel slung over his shoulder as he burped her. Ridiculous. But he must have done it if he'd traveled with the baby. He must have been the one who fed her the bottle and burped her and changed poopy diapers. There was no one else around, no companion nanny. And why wasn't there? I accepted the towel, tucked the baby upright against me, and started patting her back encouragingly.

"So why did you do this, Krycek?" Walter asked. The old edge was back in his voice, as if we were in his office and Krycek were still one of his agents, an agent whose paperwork was late. "What's the point?"

*****

How was I going to explain this to them? I wasn't sure I understood it myself. If I told them I was doing this to make amends, they'd laugh in my face. Besides, it wasn't that simple. Would they understand that I had wanted to wring something good out of the evil the Consortium had done? Out of actions that made paid assassination look like eating meat on Friday by comparison? Would they believe that Alex Krycek wanted to do that?

"I wanted to create something, instead of destroying," I began, feeling my way into the words. "I wanted to know how that feels. And I wanted to give you something, the three of you. Something that would show you that life was really going on. I wanted to give you something that the Consortium and the X-Files had taken away. I thought it over and decided on a baby." I took a sip of coffee. It was very good.

"A baby." That was Skinner. I nodded.

"A baby. The one thing none of you have," I pointed out. "The one thing Scully can't have."

She was looking at me with a slightly puzzled but still dangerous expression on her face, notwithstanding the fact that she was burping the baby. It was like a tiger cub looking at a human being for the first time, wondering if this new thing is any good to eat.

"So all of this--stuff," she said, "all those boxes of baby things--they were all from *you*?"

"Yeah. I don't do things halfway."

"So why do they have Scully's mother's name on them?" Mulder put in.

"I thought that in case the delivery got here ahead of me and the baby, you wouldn't ditch the stuff right away if it had a safe, familiar name on it. Wouldn't you have thrown the stuff out if it had said, 'From A. Krycek'?"

"We almost threw it out, anyway," Scully murmured. The baby was making cheerful little post-digestive noises over her shoulder, gurgling and kicking her feet against Scully's breast. I liked it when she did that--she did it when I burped her, too. Babies are so uncomplicated. Fulfill their simple needs, and they love you for it. Very refreshing when you've had the kind of career that I have.

"I think she's all right now," I said. To my surprise, Scully handed the baby back to me. Well, hello, sweetheart. I cuddled her in the bad arm and took a whiff of happy baby smell.

"You know all about me, don't you?" Scully asked. Right away my whole body tensed up--that tone meant Scully on the warpath. I jiggled the baby more forcefully, hoping little Scully wouldn't notice I was instinctively heading into kill mode.

"You know where I live," Scully said dreamily. "Where I work. Who I live with. What I used to do for a living. What I want. What I need. Well, you don't know *shit*, Krycek!"

She jumped to her feet so quickly that the heavy wooden chair toppled over behind her. Between the loud noises and the sudden tension in my muscles, the baby started crying. Scully recoiled from the sound, turning away and folding in on herself to hide the tears. Skinner got up to go to her, but Mulder said his name, "Walter--"

When Skinner held out his arms for the baby, I handed her over. Might as well let him get used to his daughter. He got her little head nicely supported in one big hand and cradled the rest of her little body with the other. He looked like a natural at parenthood--very sweet. It was Mulder who got up and went around the table and cuddled Scully. This was very interesting. Sure, they were all three living together, so I figured they still had a threesome going, but my research had turned up that Scully was married to Skinner. It was an interesting household, no question.

I got up and backed away from them. "I'm sorry, Scully." I put as much feeling into my voice as I could--overacted, hoping they'd believe I felt *something*. "I thought that this--that this would--I don't know, fill the gap, or something. It filled a gap for me, somehow." Which was absolutely true. "But if you don't want her, her surrogate and I can raise her--"

"No!" Whoa, some people's eyes really *do* flash. In Scully's case, it's not unlike streaks of lightning darting out at you--big streaks.

"You said she's mine. She's ours." She took a deep breath, looked up at Mulder, who was still holding her, and over to Skinner, who was snuggling the baby. "And we want her. Don't we?"

Even I, who have never been particularly sensitive to displays of emotion, could not have resisted the naked pleading in Scully's voice. No feminine wiles there, just outright begging. I thought Mulder and Skinner were both going to cry. I thought *I* was going to cry.

Bingo.

"Yes, we do," said Mulder.

What with one thing and another, I found myself spending the night at the Scully/Skinner/Mulder household. I helped unpack all the baby stuff and get it organized; then I went through baby Scully's schedule with all three of them and tried to impress on them the fact that *they* were going to have to adjust to *her*, and not vice versa. Skinner, at least, seemed to get the idea. The other two looked kind of flaked out at the idea that *all this stuff*--and *all those diapers*--were for one tiny baby.

They had an extra bedroom, and the baby and I went in there, at least for the time being. So it should have been no surprise that when the little Scully woke up hungry and cranky, I was the one who heard her, and I was the one who got up.

After she ate and belched, she was still cranky, so I started walking her around the room and singing to her. Normally I would have popped in that baby Mozart Effect relaxation tape first, but I didn't know where the fuck that was at the moment, there were so many boxes still unpacked. And frankly, even though I'm a piss-poor singer, she liked hearing me better than canned Wolfgang. The human voice was the important thing, not the poetry of the lyrics or the high quality of the music.

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of songs I know by heart. And of the ones I do know, there are quite a few that you don't want to sing to your baby. I may be a sociopath, but I'm not a psycho. The first time she threw a midnight fit on me, I sang the first thing that popped into my head. It worked, so now there I was at 2:30 a.m. in the guest room of the Mulder/Scully/Skinner household, ambling around the room with a baby in my arms, softly singing, "We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine...." It doesn't have any really high notes, so I do okay.

I went around the crib clockwise and counter-clockwise about half a dozen times and before she settled. I kissed her on the forehead--it's true, babies smell good--and laid her down again, on her back the way the pediatrician recommended, and covered her up with the sheet.

When I turned around to go back to bed, I had an audience. All three of them were standing in the doorway, goggling at me. I could have shot off that little thing that dangles at the back of your mouth, no sweat, on all three of them.

"I would have figured you for more of a Blue Meanie type, Krycek." That was Mulder, always the smartass.

"Tell me your favorite Beatle and I'll tell you mine," I replied, feeling stupid and noticing that I was wearing nothing but a grubby t-shirt and grubbier briefs, and my fucking ugly prosthesis. I hadn't felt comfortable enough to take it off to sleep.

"Is she all right?" Scully asked, coming over to peer into the crib.

"She's fine. I gave her her bottle and then a song, and she'll be fine for a few hours now."

"She likes it when you sing to her?" A very faint, maybe I was imagining it smile softened Scully's face.

"Yeah, she does. Poor kid, she has lousy taste in music."

Scully reached down and touched the baby's forehead, smoothing back her soft wispy hair. "Well, if she likes your singing, maybe she'll like mine, too."

I thought then that maybe there was a chance this silly-ass scheme of mine would work.

******

Mulder prevailed on Krycek to go and sleep in his room and let Mulder sleep in the spare room with the baby. When I got up for church the next morning, to go to the early Mass, Mulder was sitting in the kitchen with the baby, talking to her while she drooled on his shirt.

"And *then*, Tooms squeeeeeeeezed through the chimney, and he wiggled and squiggled and--"

"You're going to give her nightmares," I observed. He looked up, startled, and then grinned.

"It's all in the tone, Scully. At this point I could be telling her about the sex life of the bonobos, and it wouldn't make a difference."

"I wish you wouldn't." Mulder had made coffee, and I helped myself to a cup of that and a piece of coffee cake. I preferred fasting before Mass, but my men tended to give me a hard time about that.

"She's so little, Scully," he said, sounding almost reverent.

"That won't last long." Krycek limped into the kitchen, wearing yesterday's clothes and looking like ten miles of bad road. "She's already a good bit bigger than when she was born." He poured himself a cup of coffee, which he was able to grasp with the prosthetic hand, and stroked the baby's little hand with a fingertip. I noticed that she grasped at it and squeezed, and that Krycek smiled at that. "And how are you this morning, sweetie?"

"I'm fine, Krycek, and don't call me 'sweetie'," Mulder said. Krycek snorted into his cup.

"Very funny. Hey, we can't call her 'sweetheart' and 'my little cabbage' for ever."

"'My little cabbage'?" I asked.

"It's a Russian thing. My grandmother used to call me that. So, what are you going to name her?"

The question took me by surprise. So did the idea that Alex Krycek had a grandmother who once called him "my little cabbage". I found myself staring at the baby, at her sugar-white forehead against Mulder's grey t-shirt, as if she would suddenly speak and say her name. The answer came to me, but it wasn't easy to say, especially in front of Alex Krycek.

"I think... Emily Melissa would be good."

Krycek nodded, casually, and Mulder gave me a Deep Look. Fortunately, Walter came into the kitchen before Mulder could say anything.

"Well." Walter stopped and looked at the three of us, seated around the table. Krycek was cutting himself a piece of coffee cake.

"Hey, Daddy Walter, why don't you take her for a while? I need to go take a shower." Mulder grinned at Walter and then threw a quick glance at me.

"I'll hold her while you get some coffee, Skinner," Krycek offered. He held out his arms, and Mulder passed him the baby. Krycek nestled her into his left side with the prosthetic arm and continued to eat and drink with his other hand, as if he'd been doing it for years. I guess he had been doing it for a week or so. Walter took the chair Mulder vacated, poured some coffee, and then accepted the baby from Krycek. She burbled a little, spit running down her chin, but otherwise, she didn't seem to mind being passed around like that. She hadn't even minded the hard plastic arm, as far as I could see.

After a minute, I excused myself, saying I had to go find something to wear to church. I hoped Walter and Krycek wouldn't kill each other in the meantime, but I thought the baby's presence--*Emily's* presence--would restrain Walter, at least, and maybe Krycek, too. I didn't head for my bedroom, however, not yet; I went to join Mulder in the shower.

I barely had the door closed behind me when he grabbed me and kissed me. Mulder has a thing about fooling around in the shower, and I'd known from the look he gave me before he left the kitchen that he was inviting me to join him there. And I needed this. Needed to be held against him, his skin warm and wet, his arms tight around me, his warm wet hungry mouth devouring mine.

"You okay?" he asked, when he'd let me go. I nodded.

"I think so." I couldn't help it--I smiled. "She's a beautiful baby."

Mulder smiled back. He has a very sweet smile that I still don't get to see enough of. "She looks like you, Scully."

He kissed me again, sweetly, this time, and nibbled on my neck. It felt so good, it thawed out my insides, but--"Let me wash off first," I said.

"I'll wash you."

He knows me too well, after all this time. He slathered my hair with strawberry-scented conditioning shampoo. He left the shampoo in while he washed me all over, quickly but gently, with strawberry-cucumber soap. Then he rinsed my head and my body, combing his fingers through my hair, wiping persistently between my legs to take away the soap.

"Now I'll moisturize you," he said, teasing. I leaned back against the shower wall and watched his long, beautiful hands massage almond-scented oil into my breasts, over the nick on my arm, into my belly, and then over my mound.

"I think I'm getting moist," I said breathlessly.

"I think you are," he murmured as his slick fingers sank into me.

He made me come once, his fingers inside me, his thumb on my clit, before kneeling down with the spray hitting his back, so that I could straddle him and hide my face against his shoulder while I moved. I rocked back and forth with him inside me, humming in my throat. I needed this so badly... I needed something normal. I needed to be touched, needed to be kissed, needed to be fucked.

I came again when he put an oily finger into my bottom, stretching me and rubbing me just the way I like, and again when he came, arching his back and shaking underneath me, grinding hard against my clit. As usual, we were noisy, but I didn't care. I just hoped Walt didn't plan to shower too soon--the water heater would need to fill up again.

We dried each other off, both grinning.

"Boy, I needed that."

"I know you did." He gave me a quick kiss on the forehead. "So did I."

"We do have a strange life, don't we?"

"Would you want it any other way?"

Shaking my head, I went back to my bedroom and got dressed for Mass and went back down to the kitchen to say good-bye before I left.

******

She was the prettiest little baby I had ever seen. Not that I'd seen a lot of them. Just enough to wish Sharon and I had had children. Yeah, I'd wanted kids, or at least one child. And here she was in my arms, a tiny little thing who couldn't hold her head up yet,with reddish-gold hair and my wife's bright blue eyes looking up at me, vaguely, somehow my daughter, and Dana's, and Mulder's. Good God, a father for the first time at the age of... too damned close to sixty.

I looked over at Krycek, our unlikely benefactor. He tried to hide the shit-eating grin he was wearing behind a mouthful of coffee cake. It didn't work. "She's a sweetheart, she is." He wiped powdered sugar off his mouth.

"Why, Krycek? Why?"

He shrugged and shook his head. "I can't explain it any better than I already did. I wanted to... help create some life."

"You couldn't have just knocked somebody up?" I growled. He grimaced.

"Number one, I'd make a lousy father. Number two, I'd make a lousy husband. And number three, I'm queer, in case you'd never noticed."

Now that was interesting. I'd never really thought about it one way or the other, despite Krycek's history with Mulder. I knew he had a thing for my Fox, but I'd never translated that into "Alex Krycek is a full-time homosexual."

"You look surprised," he observed.

I snorted. "Despite what you did to Mulder, I haven't spent much time speculating about your sex life."

The barb didn't seem to touch him. "Neither have I." He drained his coffee and shook the pot to check for more, but there wasn't any. "Got any juice?"

"Help yourself." Krycek got up and prowled around the kitchen. The baby gurgled and drooled. "Hand me a paper towel, would you?"

He did so and then sputtered when I wiped her chin with it. "Christ, Skinner, you wanna rip her skin off? Here, fuck the juice, let me show you how to take care of this baby."

Krycek found the baby bath, showed me how to get the water the right temperature, and got out the liquid soap and the wash cloth. I just stood there like an idiot while he undressed the baby and put her in the warm water, crooning nonsense to her all the time. "Don't worry, Skinner, she likes her bath. Just watch her head, okay? There you go, my little cabbage head, let Daddy Walter get you nice and clean...."

I ignored his teasing. She was so little, so fragile, I had to put all my attention on bathing her, not hurting her. Her skin felt like something that would just melt away under my touch. I looked at her almost translucent fingertips, her tiny little nipples, the neat fold of her genitals between her wobbly legs... a daughter. A human being. She was going to grow up to be a human being. And part of me had had something to do with it.

A few minutes later, I heard my wife calling my name. She wandered into the baby's room and stopped, staring at the surreal little grouping we made. I was drying the baby with a soft towel, going slowly and gently because I hardly wanted to let go of her, and Krycek was digging into boxes and the old chest of drawers, laying out a clean diaper, a blue sleeper dotted with pink flowers, and a bib that said "Hi, World!"

Dana smiled at me, leaning in the doorway in her pretty pink linen suit, all ready for church. "Mulder is right. Our life is strange, but I think I like it like that."

She came over and stretched up on tiptoe to give me a kiss. "See you later." She pressed a kiss to the top of the baby's head--the baby's hair was even softer than her skin--looked at Krycek as if she almost thought she should kiss him, too, and then left.

"I can take it from here," I said to Krycek. He had an odd look on his face. "Why don't you go take a shower, borrow some clean clothes from Mulder or me?"

The odd look got odder. "Okay," he said after a moment. He made a move toward the baby, aborted it, left the room. I looked down at her little head sticking up out of the towel, and she looked up at me with that "I'm seeing God" look that babies so often have. I had the weirdest feeling he would have kissed her if I hadn't been holding her.

"He likes you, doesn't he, little girl?"

******

I took Skinner's suggestion and went looking for Mulder. It was a little bit like Goldilocks in the house of the three bears: Which door is the right one? I was in the spare bedroom, soon to be a decent nursery if I had anything to say about it. The first bedroom I looked into, with pink and mauve and a strand of pearls on the dresser, had to be Scully's. The next bedroom, decorated in manly colors like dark blues, greens and reds, had the largest bed I've ever seen; maybe this was where they held the orgies? Cufflinks, no hairbrush: Skinner. The last room, of course, was just right: a narrow, rumpled bed, and Mulder whistling to himself, pulling a t-shirt over his head.

"Um, excuse me...."

His head popped through the neck hole like a rabbit popping up out of its hole, then he pulled the shirt down. Not before I had gotten a good fast look at his chest and stomach, which were still beautiful in spite of all the years we both had on us. As beautiful as I remembered.

"Where's the baby?"

I grinned. "I helped Skinner give her a bath." Mulder grinned back. "Uh, Skinner suggested I could take a shower... you or he could lend me some clothes...."

His expression changed completely--two or three times in the space of a second. "Sure." He squinted at me. "You're a little heavier than I am, I think--maybe a shirt from me, shorts from Walt?"

I took the green t-shirt he offered me and followed him down the hall, first to the room with the huge bed to grab shorts and briefs, then to the linen closet for a towel and a washcloth. "Help yourself to shampoo or whatever. You'll be able to tell the difference between the guy stuff and Scully's stuff." Mulder started to say something else, but stopped and studied me for a moment. "You really didn't bring any clothes or anything? You just thought you'd run in, drop off a baby, run out?"

I leaned in the bathroom doorway, feeling suddenly very tired. "I guess I wasn't really thinking at all, Mulder. I had so much shit to pack just for the baby... and maybe I was a little afraid you'd just start shooting when you saw me, baby or no baby, and I had to be ready to run." I shook my head. "I don't know."

Mulder nodded. He was giving me that mind-reading look of his. "Take a good long shower," he said after a moment, then grinned wickedly. "The hot water should be full up again."

It was a nice bathroom, old plumbing but big, full of junk, his, hers, and his. Even three people shouldn't have this much soap, shampoo, conditioner, perfume, and skin emollients. I found some disposable razors; they were pink, but I used one anyway--any more hair on my face and I'd frighten little Scully. Emily Melissa. I'd have to remember that. I was in the shower when it really hit me what a stupid, crazy, dangerous, foolhardy, over-the-top thing I'd done. Jesus H. Fucking Christ, I'd engineered a *baby* for these people. For people who had damned good reasons to shoot me on sight, even though I'd helped them in the end, even though I'd been out of their lives for ten fucking years. A baby. I'd created a life. Shit, hadn't I been as morally presumptuous as the old men I used to work for, men who picked up unlisted phone lines and ordered clones and alien hybrids and abductions every day of the week? Who the hell was I to try to create life?

And it was life bought at the price of more death. I leaned against the shower wall; my stump was throbbing like hell. The few Consortium scientists remaining who had had the knowledge to splice three people together into one new gene sequence had also had too much other knowledge, too many connections, too much power. I had gone into this project knowing I would have to kill them in the end, and I did kill them, and frankly, they deserved it--but did I have to be their angel of death?

Part of me said the child of the three smartest, strongest people I knew was worth infinitely more than a few would-be Dr. Frankensteins willing to experiment on their own species. Part of me said I was definitely going to hell for this one.

At least it was Mulder, not Scully or Skinner, who found me slumped on the floor of the shower, crying while the cold water ran over me, goose bumps on what was left of my arms. I had just realized I'd devoted almost five years to this baby project, and I had no idea what to do with the rest of my life.

******

"Krycek? Krycek. Alex!"

I hauled open the door of the shower and saw one of the most pathetic sights of my life: Alex Krycek, spy, assassin, mastermind, huddled on the floor of the shower, trying to hug himself with an arm and a half. His teeth were chattering, and dry, asthmatic-sounding sobs were coming out between the chattering. I dove in to turn off the spray and yelped--it wasn't ice-cold, but it was getting there. Then I slid the doors down to the other end of the shower so I could grab him by the shoulders and haul him out.

He stumbled out onto the bath mat and shook himself like a wet dog. "What've I done, Mulder? What've I done?"

"The best thing you could think of," I said without thinking, and then blinked. I guessed that was right. It was a crazy scheme, and yet... it was typical of Krycek. He'd used nanocytes to control Walter, at one point. He'd worked for years with people who did shit like this every day--splice a gene here, borrow a sperm sample there, clones and hybrids while you wait. Why shouldn't he try to make amends than by using those resources to give a baby to someone he knew wanted but couldn't have one?

And now he'd done that, and he didn't know what to do with himself. You didn't need to have been a professional profiler to see that.

I had to dry him off head to foot and start to put clothes on him before he got hold of himself. I couldn't help noticing that he'd gained weight and scars since the last time I'd seen him naked. He still looked damned good. He still affected me. But he was just helpless, right now. He wasn't crying, exactly, he didn't have tears running down his cheeks, but those painful dry sobs kept coming, and he couldn't stop shaking. He got the arm on okay, which was pretty amazing, but fumbled and nearly fell on his face trying to put on his shorts. I let him--he turned his back on me while he dressed, and I figured I'd better not try to help any further.

Once he had the shirt on, I put my hands on his shoulders. He flinched. "Look, it's okay." I groped for something to say. "You don't have to run right out, you know. In fact, we're not going to let you." He turned around, and I gave him half-a-grin. "We've gotta check out all that paperwork and make sure you're on the up-and-up."

"I am, Mulder." He sounded desperate and solemn and scarily unlike himself. "I am."

"I believe you are," I said, and I looked him right in the eye because I *did* believe him. I believed Alex Krycek had tried to do a Good Thing, and he had absolutely no idea how to go about it. Of course he'd gone about it in a fucked-up way--he had no practice. But he had tried to do something good; he deserved credit for it.

******

Once I had the baby bathed and dressed, she seemed sleepy, so I settled her in her carryall and took her down to the living room, tucking her into a corner of the couch. Moose wandered in and breathed on her, and I was afraid she was going to scream in terror, but she took it like a trouper and gave Moose that "You are God" look. Moose hung out her tongue and looked pleased, then posted herself as a sentry next to thealready-sleeping infant. If anybody wanted to hurt Emily Melissa, they'd have to go through Moose. Which would make anyone think twice.

I wanted to watch the video Krycek had brought, a video affidavit from the surrogate mother. Maybe this would help me get a grip on the whole situation, scope out what Krycek was really up to. I set it up in the VCR, grabbed juice and the last of the coffee cake on a quick run to the kitchen, and settled down to watch.

It wasn't very long. I watched it three times. I watched it the way I used to watch people I had to question, or suspects I had to interrogate, or squirming agents in my office. And when I had watched it and thought about it, I was convinced. Krycek had meant what he said.

Fox came in with Krycek as I was rewinding the tape. Krycek was clean, wet-headed, clean-shaven, and looked worse than ever. He was white like somebody in shock. Mulder made eyes at me. He'd tell me all about it later. "Watching the affidavit?"

"Yeah. You wanna see it?"

"Yeah, I do." Mulder dropped onto the couch between me and the baby, who appeared to be asleep suddenly. Krycek sat down in the rocking chair, hunching over with his arms around himself. The video clicked to a stop, and I pressed 'play' again.

Blue screen, then a young woman seated at a desk, with a computer on her right and a poster on the wall behind her. Tall, basically slim, long dark hair alling over her shoulders, loosely curly, a slender collarbone showing over the neckline of an olive green shirt. She still had a little belly on her.

"Mr. and Mrs. Skinner, my name is Tabitha Kingsley. I'm twenty-three, in excellent health, and currently a full-time student. I'm the surrogate mother for your daughter. Mr. Krycek asked me to make this video to confirm my written affidavit. I have waived any legal claim I might have on the child I carried for you. I will never come back to haunt you or make your life miserable."

She shifted in her chair and pushed her hair back behind her right ear. "Mr. Krycek has told me a little bit about you, that you've been unable to carry a child to term. I want you to know that with the generous sum of money you paid me for the surrogacy, I will be able to go to medical school. I have completed my bachelor of science degree, but without this money, I wouldn't be able to fulfill my career plans. I want to go into infertility research and hopefully make it possible for infertile couples to conceive and carry children with less humiliation, less difficulty, and less risk. Perhaps someday, someone else in your situation will be able to carry their own child due to my research. I wish you and your daughter the very best, and hope you'll do the same for me."

She smiled and waved. Blue screen.

While the video ran, I watched Mulder. He sat forward with his legs splayed and his elbows on his knees, tugging at his lower lip with forefinger and thumb. He was eating it up with his eyes, doing that Mulder thing he did, but I had a strong suspicion that he had already made up his mind about the issue--he already believed Krycek because of something Krycek had done or said in the past half-hour.

When it was over, he fumbled for the remote. "Let me see it again."

This time, I watched Krycek. He didn't really look at the screen. At first he just slumped in the rocking chair, his chin almost on his chest, his eyes half-closed. Then I saw him look over at the baby when she made a little snorting noise. After that his eyes moved around the room--checking for something? checking for dangers?--always coming back to the baby. It was as if he couldn't stop looking at her.

That convinced me, too.

The baby startled all of us by making a loud grunting noise, a very loud, animal-like noise from that tiny mouth. Krycek snorted and got to his feet. "That's her announcement that she now needs a clean diaper. She's very helpful that way."

Mulder wrinkled his nose but started loosening the straps on the carryall. "I'll take care of it. Guess I have to get used to it, huh?"

"You've seen worse," Krycek assured him.

"You mean it doesn't asphyxiate you or dissolve your flesh?" Mulder quipped as we all headed for the baby's room.

I don't know how one tiny infant on a diet of formula can produce so much shit, but we survived it. Little Emily Melissa looked at all three of us as though we were God.

******

When I got back from church, the living room was empty except for our pets. Moose was sleeping on the braided rug; the fish looked half asleep, too, hanging quietly in their tank; Budgerella was whispering to her mineral block, broadcasting on what Mulder called Radio Free Budgie.

As I climbed the stairs, I heard noises--thumping, banging, loud male voices. Uh-oh. Hoping they hadn't decided to kill one another on the second floor, I followed the noises down the hall to the spare bedroom.

"Wow."

The spare bedroom was, amazingly, well on its way to becoming a nursery. Walter and Mulder and Krycek were all grinning, sweaty, and splashed with paint. Walter was naked to the waist, with drips of paint on his wonderful chest hair and his denim cut-offs. My heart rate spiked with arousal--I have a terrible weakness for Walter's chest. Mulder was hanging green and yellow curtains; his legs were at a level with my eyes. And Krycek, at the moment, was holding the baby, cradling her in a thin blanket against his "flesh-colored" plastic arm, which was about the color of my grandmother's World-War-Two-era stockings.

"Wow," I said again.

"You like?" asked Mulder.

"A lot," I said honestly.

Apparently, more of the stuff Krycek had supplied had been unpacked, or else they had run out and bought it, which was unlikely. There was unfinished pine furniture, an airy golden color, that hadn't been there when I left for church. A mobile of the solar system had been hung above the crib. A baby monitor had been installed on the wall just inside the door. There was even a bookcase on the far wall, with a few books on it. I wandered over and checked them out. There were all the big pregnancy/infancy/early childhood books I had looked at when I was still trying to get pregnant, looked at but never bought, plus a few children's classics--Pooh, Alice, _Charlotte's Web_ and its two companion books, the Harry Potter series.

I turned and looked at Krycek. "Did you buy all these?"

He swallowed. I swear he blushed. "Yeah. I mean, I needed the reference material... and all the reference books said reading to your child is good for 'em...."

Maybe it was because I was in a state of grace after Mass. Maybe it was the August light slanting golden through the room. Maybe I was just crazy. I went over to Alex Krycek, laid my hand on the hard, slippery arm that was holding my child, stretched up, and kissed his cheek. "Thank you."

******

Things settled down into a routine faster than I would have expected. I guess babies need that--routine, predictability, a universe they can count on. It quickly stopped feeling strange having Alex Krycek, retired assassin--or maybe not retired--be the resident baby expert. After all, he was the one who'd done all the research. He laid down the law and we obeyed it: what schedule to follow, what kind of formula to use, what brand of diapers to buy. Walter offered to fix him up a room over the garage - just like Fonzie, I thought, black leather jacket and all - but he said no, he wouldn't be around long, he'd just sleep in the baby's room.

That was over a month ago. He's still sleeping there.

The story we came up with was that the baby is the child of Scully's nonexistent niece Amy, who got pregnant as a teenager and then conveniently perished in a car crash soon after the baby was born. The baby's dad also perished in the aforementioned car accident, and Amy's mom, the equally nonexistent Bridget, already has kids ranging from fifteen to six and just couldn't handle one more, so the Scully-Skinners had been asked to adopt the orphan, which they did, with pleasure. Scully found a really good pediatrician, Dr. Liz Bratigan, and had the baby checked out. Emily is almost a textbook baby, according to Liz--the right weight for her size, no infections or other health problems, responsive to all the right stimuli. Liz even went along with a number of tests pediatricians don't usually have to perform; Scully wanted to double-check all the data Krycek had brought us, make sure that Emily really was 100% human--God, if she hadn't been--and the daughter of Dana Scully, Walter Skinner, and Fox Mulder.

Jesus. Me, a father.

It's a lot easier than I ever thought. It's a lot more fun than I ever thought. Maybe it's the fact that I have two, no, three other people responsible for the same child. I'm a therapist with a private practice; Scully's a detective for the Kroeber PD; Walter manages a local hardware store and keeps it in the black despite competition from the big chains. Walter and I have exclusively daytime hours; Scully rotates shifts in the usual way. Krycek, at this point, doesn't seem to have a job, except for making mysterious long-distance calls on his cellphone, and he's still sleeping in Emily's room. Walter and Scully and I worked out a schedule of night duty, who'd get up to feed Ems or respond to her crying, but most of the time, Krycek beats us to it. I hear her crying, and by the time I've gotten down the hall, she's already calming down, listening to him sing "Bungalow Bill" or "Norwegian Wood" or some little Slavic folk song that sounds like it might be risque if you translated it into English. Or I go in with her warm bottle, and he wakes up as I'm getting her out of her crib. He doesn't seem to mind. He just sleeps on our couch all day with the TV on, like a diurnal version of myself, a few years ago, Moose at his feet and Budgerella chirping along in the background.

The dog likes him. I can't get over that. The bird likes him, too. He talks to her, and she does that head-bobbing thing, a sort of head-banger motion accompanied by spiked-up feathers and contracted pupils. Some nights I still wonder if he's going to shoot me in my sleep, or if one of us is going to crack and shoot him, but the last thing I worry about is that he might hurt the baby. He obviously adores her--only he doesn't know it. It's hysterical. All she has to do is blow a little spit-bubble, and Krycek is right there, ready to fix what's wrong. God help the boys when she starts to date.

It was Krycek who coined the baby's nickname. I had taken a Saturday off so Scully and Walter could go out somewhere and act like husband and wife, and I wound up having lunch with Krycek and the baby. He eats like a starving wolf, so he finished his grilled cheese well before I did; when the baby made her "I'm awake from my nap now" noises, he jumped up and darted upstairs to get her. I tried not to smirk into my food as he joggled her on his knee and talked to her, half in English, half in Russian. "Well, vasilissa, emmalissa," he kept saying.

"What did you call her?" I asked.

He shut up for a moment. "Vasilissa. It means princess, more or less."

"Yes, but what was the other thing? Emmalissa?"

He frowned, then grinned. "Yeah. Emmalissa. For Emily Melissa. I guessed I've called her that before, without noticing it."

"Emmalissa. I like it," I said, still trying not to smirk, but failing. It stuck. Now we all call her that, along with a disgusting array of other cute nicknames.

I call her "Emmalissa," "Ems," "the spitball", "the wonderbaby", and a few other things I'm not going to divulge. Walter calls her "Emmalissa," "Daddy's little girl" (which he always says in a very goopy tone of voice), "princess", and "the poop factory". Scully, always more formal, uses "Emily", "Emmalissa", "sweetheart", and other more normal endearments. Krycek calls her "Emmalissa", "Vasilissa," "my little cabbage head", and some things in French and Russian that he refuses to translate. One of these days I'm going to tape his conversations with the baby and get the Lone Gunmen to translate them for me. It'll be useful blackmail material someday.

Almost two months went by, and Alex showed no signs of disappearing. Or even of getting out of the house. Everything had checked out okay; he could have taken the next plane out of the Seattle airport anytime he wanted, but he showed no inclination to get away from Emmalissa. This was something Scully and Walter and I had all noticed, and talked about.

I went and kicked him in the foot one day as he was dozing in the rocker--Ems had had a pretty hard night. He jumped and started to pull a gun, then patted himself like he didn't know where his piece had gotten to. "You're turning into fridge fungus, Krycek. Come on out for a walk with me and Moose."

He yawned, stretched, rubbed his eyes. "Shit. She was colicky last night...."

"I know. My boyfriend kept getting out of a warm bed to take care of her." I noticed a small, not completely suppressed doubletake from Krycek. It had been Walter's turn for night shift with Ems, but he had been horny for me anyway and spent the night--or tried to--in my bed. "But you need the exercise, and so does Moose. And so do I. Come on, it's not raining, it'll be fun."

Krycek pulled himself to his feet, looked around the room as if checking for something, and shrugged. "Okay, Mulder. We'll go out, you can show off beautiful downtown Kroeber."

I grinned. "You got it."

The weather was already turning pretty cool; it was late September in the Pacific Northwest, and we were lucky it wasn't raining. It wasn't even cloudy; everything was bright the way it is in fall, bright in a way that's soft and easy on the eyes. Krycek wouldn't look out of place in his long-sleeved henley and faded jeans, walking along with his hands jammed in his pockets. The prosthetic hand is convincing at a distance, but obviously fake up close, and it was really too warm yet to wear those leather gloves of his.

Moose dragged me across the lawn, her tongue hanging out a foot on the side of her face, and we turned right and headed slightly uphill toward the center of town. Our house is on a side street about four blocks from Main Street, and yes, it *is* called Main Street. Kroeber is a small town that dates from the late 1800s, from Gold Rush days, according to some, from Native American settlement or nosy anthropologists, say others. There are a few Salish and Tlingit living in town and others who come in from the surrounding area. The buildings on Main Street pretty much all date from that period, and they show their age but graciously, like an old lady who wears good jewelry but doesn't try to fill in the wrinkles with make-up any more.

Moose wheezed, drooling visibly with eagerness, and I tried to get her to slow down. I needed to talk to Krycek, and if she took a dump too soon, we might not get around to saying what needed to be said. Walter and Scully and I had talked this over pretty thoroughly.

******

We were all tumbled into Walter's big bed, the place where we all three get together. It doesn't happen every night, believe me; in fact, there are a lot of nights when each of sleeps alone and is happy about it. But Walter and Dana had come back from their little getaway wanting more sex, specifically sex with yours truly, so we'd asked Krycek if he would mind being on night duty by himself. I'm sure he knew exactly why we were asking him, but he said yes without batting an eyelash or cracking a smirk.

"So you guys spent your day away thinking about me?" I asked.

"Pretty much," Scully admitted, nuzzling my chest.

"That's very flattering," I said, wondering how Walter was going to get it up again if they'd spent the day boffing in some cute little bed and breakfast. We're none of us as young as we used to be.

"We talked about you over breakfast," Walter said from behind me. He was kissing my neck and rubbing his cock against my ass. His *erect* cock, come to think of it. Well, boy howdy.... "And lunch. And dinner."

I let out a little gasp as Scully slid down the front of me. "Did you two do anything besides eat... and talk?"

"We shopped," Scully murmured. Her lips just grazed the head of my cock. "And we necked in a park, in a secluded spot."

"Just--ah! ahhh... necked?" Scully's mouth on my cock, Walter's mouth on my shoulder....

"Just *necked*," Walter informed me, sliding his cock meaningfully between the cheeks of my ass.

Sandwiched between the two of them, Walter in me and me in Scully, I came so hard my head spun. Life is good. I was just hearing the first snores from Walter when Scully leaned over on my chest.

"We were also talking about Krycek," she said, in a rather loud tone for post-coital reverie.

Walter snorted and rolled over to face us. "Yeah, we were, weren't we?" He yawned. "Sorry, remember, I'm an old man, here."

It was my turn to snort. "If I can stay awake after sex, so can you. So what about Krycek?"

"You notice he's still here," Scully said wryly.

"Well, he does take up a lot of space in the living room, but Moose doesn't seem to mind...."

Scully poked me. Thank God she keeps her fingernails short. "He could be somewhere else, is my point."

"Well, yeah...."

"So why do you think he's staying here?" Walter put in from my other side.

I thought about that for maybe two seconds--no, less than that. "He wants to be near the baby."

"Bingo," said Scully. "I never thought I'd be able to say something like this, but he really loves Emily. I'm just not sure he realizes it." She smiled in the dimness.

"No, he doesn't. Even I was never as clueless as he is."

"He also wants to be near you," Walter said quietly.

I turned, trying and failing to read his face. I thought about switching the light on, but no, this conversation was safer in the dark. "You really think that?"

"I do, Fox." Even now, Walter rarely calls me that.

I lay there silent for a moment, then sighed, raked my fingers through my hair. "All right. I'll ask him to leave. Just give me a couple of days, okay?"

"No, Mulder--" Dana sounded almost surprised. "That's not what we had in mind. We think you should ask him to *stay*."

I'll admit, I was surprised. There's never been any love lost between my two former partners. I hadn't expected that Krycek's help in closing up the X-Files or even his role in the creation of Emmalissa would make up for his role in Scully's abduction and her sister's death. But then, forgiveness is a Catholic value, I guess....

"You want him to stay?" I had to hear an explanation.

Scully took a deep breath. "I think... I think that we've all done our best to heal from what our years in the X-Files did to us. The fact that Krycek tried to *give* us something--gave us our daughter--tells me that, well, that he deserves a chance at healing, too. And I think that could happen, for him, with Emmalissa. With us. Giving him a chance to stick with the one really good thing he's ever done in his life."

I digested that, as best I could. Then I reached for Walter. "What about you, Walter?"

"I think Dana's right." He paused, then, "And I think it would be good for you two to... work out all the shit that's still between you. In whatever way you think is right."

I took a long moment to digest this. And I thought about the Alex Krycek I had seen and lived with for the past month. Not the man who shot Cole and kept me from getting to Scully before Duane Barry did. Not the man who dragged me to Russia and killed Walter and brought him back to life. Not even the man who'd risked his life to help us expose the Consortium. Just the tired middle-aged man who got up in the middle of the night with a baby who wasn't his and slept on our couch all day while Budgerella threw feathers at him. He was a man who had broken with his past and had, as far as I could see, no future. If something good didn't happen for him, he was likely to get his gun out of storage and put it in his mouth.

"All right," I said finally. "I'll ask him. But if he stays, he's gotta get a *job*."

******

I noticed Krycek was puffing a little as we headed uphill. That just confirmed everything I'd profiled about him. An Alex Krycek who puffed when he walked was no longer an Alex Krycek who had to run for his life nearly every moment. And if he wasn't that Alex Krycek, who was he?

"I really want to thank you for Emily. Emmalissa. And all the help you've given us." Moose stopped and sniffed at a parking meter. "That comes from Scully and Skinner as well as me."

A strangely... *embarrassed* look came over Krycek's face. He even kicked at a nonexistent pebble. "Well, you're welcome. I'm just lucky you didn't shoot me and the baby at first sight."

"You made Scully very happy," I went on, laying on thick tones of sincerity. Not that what I said wasn't true, but I needed to make him squirm.

"Thanks."

We walked on, past Arnold's Ice Cream Parlour, Tenny's Five and Dime (more like Five Bucks and Ten, these days), and Marino's Italian Restaurant. A very nice place; we hadn't been there in a while, not since before the baby. B.B.--before baby. Yeah, that summed up life now--before and after Emily. Moose stopped in front of Kellerman's Pharmacy and squatted to pee.

"I just wanted to thank you, on behalf of all of us, and to say that you can leave any time you want."

I was so grateful Moose had stopped--it left me free to look right at Krycek as I said those words. If I hadn't been looking right at him, I might have missed the flinch. He had a way of suppressing his reactions that could fool you even if you were looking for them--but besides being a trained FBI agent *and* a psych profiler, I knew him. I had had sex with him, more than once. I knew that body. The flinch was in the right shoulder and in the eyes.

I waited just until he was about to say something, then added, casually, "Unless, of course, you don't want to."

His mouth snapped shut like a mussel's, and his eyes hardened. His whole stance shifted, his shoulders got tight. I didn't believe it for an instant.

"What makes you think I don't want to?"

"The way you lie around on our couch all day," I said smoothly, "watching Jenny Jones and petting the dog. The way you get up every night to look after Emmalissa," I used the nickname deliberately, "even though one of the three of us is always on duty with her. The way you jump out of your skin if the baby so much as farts. Let's face it, Krycek, if you had someplace else to be, you'd be there already."

The hardness went out of his face and his body, and all of a sudden he looked old. Everything sagged, his eyes, his jaw, his shoulders; the prosthetic arm hung stiffly against his thigh. Christ, nobody should look that old in their, what, mid-forties? I'm over fifty myself; I've always assumed Krycek was younger than me, but who knows for sure?

He looked old and tired and sad, and I could see in his eyes--still incredibly gorgeous eyes, dammit--the memory of that day a couple of months ago when I'd dragged him out of a cooling shower where he was having a nervous breakdown. It was pathetic.

"You don't have to say any more, Mulder," he said. His voice rasped in his throat, cold and harsh, a carrion-eater's voice; I hadn't heard him sound like that since he'd arrived with Emily. "I'll be outta there before nightfall, okay?"

"Shut up and listen," I said, grabbing his arm. Flesh, his arm was flesh, and no matter how much he tried to hide it, Alex Krycek had feelings, just like everybody else. He was flesh and blood. "Did I say you *had* to leave? No. I said you *could* leave, if you wanted to. But *do you want to*?"

Moose was straining at the leash, scraping her toenails on the sidewalk; that snooty black poodle she has a thing for was passing by on the other side of the street, but I had to stay put, I had to stay with Krycek until he answered. So that we both knew.

I felt it in his arm before he said the word, in the way he stopped trying to pull away.

"No."

I slackened my grip on him but tugged, gently, getting him to keep walking along with us. Moose picked her pace, wheezing happily--she knew a treat was only another block ahead. "You don't have to leave, Alex. Not if you don't want to. That offer of a room over the garage is still good. You can stay with Emily. With us."

He looked at me--bleakly; I think he'd forgotten how to look happy. Idiotic as it seemed, I wanted to make him feel better. Then Moose surged forward and galloped into Morton's Deli.

"Hey, Moose!"

Jennie Morton, proprietress, came around the counter and gave Moose a knuckle-rub on her big, white, stubborn head. Jennie is a skinny dark-haired woman with long curly hair who looks vaguely Italian but isn't. Once upon a time, she would have really been my type. Now she's a friend. Moose sniffed joyously at the stains on Jennie's apron and leaned against her knees. Fortunately Jen is used to that.

"Hiya, Mulder. How's everybody?"

"We're cool, Jen. How's business?" I tried to haul Moose away before she started licking.

"Pretty good, pretty good. You want anything?" She ambled back around the counter.

"Nah--we just came in here for Moose's benefit. My dog, the beggar." 

Jennie grinned and Moose whined pleadingly. Jennie ducked into the meat case and came out again a minute later with a hunk of pepperoni for Moose.

She eyeballed Alex. "So who's your friend?"

"This is Alex Krycek, another old Fibbie," I said, casually, before Alex could open his mouth. "Alex, this is Jennie Morton, owner of the best deli in Kroeber."

Jennie wiped her hands on her apron and held one out to Alex. "Flattery will get you tongue, Mulder."

Alex stared at her hand like it was some kind of alien probe, then reached out and took it very gingerly. "Pleased to meet you," he said hoarsely.

"Likewise, I'm sure." Jennie looked him up and down, almost but not quite checking him out. "You sure you don't want a sandwich, Alex? You've kind of got that lean and hungry look...."

"Jennie Morton, honorary Italian mother *and* Jewish mother. I'll bring him back sometime when we're starving, okay, Jen?"

"You do that, Mulder," she called as we headed out to the sidewalk. "You do that."

We ambled along Main Street in silence for a while, until Moose finally did the thing we'd all been waiting for. Alex looked a little freaked out, but I just scooped the brown mountain up in a blue grocery bag and turned for home, dumping the doo-doo in the first trash can we passed.

"So what's your story, Mulder?" Krycek asked at last.

"What do you mean?" Actually, I thought I was pretty sure what he meant.

"You, Scully, Skinner--and now a baby--in a house in a small town. What's your cover?"

"Tell you when we get back to the house."

When we got back, Walter and Scully were coming down the front walk with Ems in her stroller. The baby was wearing a little yellow hat with a brim and was intolerably pleased with her own cuteness. "We thought you two had a good idea, going out for a walk," Scully said. She gave me the telepathic eyeball and I returned it.

"Yeah, it's beautiful. Moose had her pepperoni and did her big stinky thing."

Scully snorted. "Mulder, you are going to spoil that dog."

"Jennie Morton is spoiling Moose. Wait'll you see what I do to the wonderbaby." I bent over and gave Ems a kiss, then led the way into the house.

We settled into the kitchen, where most of the action seemed to take place these days. Moose went over and emptied her water dish with huge noisy gulps, as she always did after a walk. I refilled it for her and left the water running.

"Want some coffee?"

"Sure." He watched me as I made the coffee. I didn't say anything till I'd handed him a cup.

"You probably know that Scully and Skinner are married." He nodded, stirring sugar into his coffee. "Folks around here know that they're married, that Scully and I used to work together and Skinner was our boss, and that we were federal agents. They don't, however, know that we were FBI and that Scully and I were X-Files. That's a little more than they need to know."

Krycek nodded again and sipped his coffee. I remembered how he used to load it with cream and sugar when we were partners. "So what do they think of, uh, the three of you?"

I suppressed a grin. "*Officially*, I'm Walter's stepbrother as well as his former subordinate." Krycek's eyebrows went up over the rim of his coffee cup. "And officially, I'm gay."

He sputtered a little. "And they don't have any problems with that?"

I shrugged. "There are a few jerkwads here, just like everywhere, but no gay bashing. The general atmosphere here is very tolerant--just don't do it in the street and frighten the horses. So between being Scully's former partner and Walter's 'stepbrother', it doesn't seem all that odd for me to be living with them. He and I don't hold hands walking down the street or anything like that." And that was as much as I felt like telling him. I wasn't ready to talk about the years Scully and Walter and I had spent apart or the resurgence of Krycek's damned nanocytes that had brought us together.

Krycek sipped more coffee and nodded, absently; he looked like he was thinking about something. I decided to go on the offensive a little bit. "So what have you been doing all this time?"

"Besides engineering a baby?" He stared off into the distance, over my shoulder and out the kitchen window. In the living room, Budgerella shrieked loudly and then launched into a machine-gun burst of chatter, making Krycek jump.

"I guess you could say I was cleaning house," he mused. "Making sure the Consortium was really disbanded. Making sure everybody who was left could be relied on to take their marbles and go home. You have no idea how many people were really involved, Mulder... hundreds of people who never set policy, never dealt with the aliens, but whose money and other resources were sunk into the Consortium's goals. I had to fix all that. I was the only one left who had the inclination to do it... and the power."

He looked haunted. He looked like a man who has killed too many people and regretted it too little, until now. Krycek tipped up his coffee cup, then got that look that means you didn't know it was already empty when you tried to drink out of it.

"It was because I was doing that that I got the idea about the baby." I must have looked confused. He got up, poured himself more coffee, offered it to me, and sat down again, digging into the sugar. "You see, the scientists were the only people left who were really emotionally invested in the Project. The sick fucks were really turned on by all the genetic research they got to do--they weren't going to give it up unless they *had* to." He snorted. "So first I started thinking, what can I do to distract them, to keep them busy while I sabotage the worst of their work? And I thought about genetics, and the genetic material they had on hand... and about the three of you... and about using the scientists for one last project, before I sent the sorry sons of bitches to hell." He shuddered. "I'm no angel, Mulder, but some of the things they did make me look like a saint."

I was struck by something he'd said. "Genetic material? They had people's genetic material?"

"They don't any more. Like I told you before, I made sure of that." The corners of his mouth turned up in the old Krycek grin, evil and slow. "It's all finished, Mulder, done, gone, over with." He sighed and looked surprised by it. "And now what do I do?"

"Actually, Alex, I've got an idea...."

******

I felt like a freak. Me, Alex Krycek, formerly the most reliable hitman in the world's most evil secret conspiracy, dressed up in a suit and tie (but a *decent* suit this time, dammit), teaching *high school*. I'd been afraid I'd pull out my gun and shoot the principal during the interview, just on general principles, but Mulder convinced me that Le Guin High needed a tough teacher with a background in chemistry and physics. As well as ballistics, marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, and mind-fucking aging men with delusions of grandeur, but I didn't put all that on the application.

Mulder talked me into the interview. He also talked me into moving into the room overtop the garage, which Skinner fixed up for me, talked me into staying around, told me I'd be good for Emmalissa. The principal told me I'd be good for the school. He turned out to be an ex-Navy man who thought having an ex-FBI agent on his faculty was a great idea, especially an agent who'd worked under Walter Skinner. Skinner put in a good word for me and didn't say what kind of ex-agent I'd been. I swallowed my gratitude for him and took the job.

I felt like a freak, but I threw myself into the job. I felt like a freak when I looked out at my students--eighth, ninth, and tenth graders, some of them black, some Native American, all of them fresh-faced and hormone-driven and smarter than they knew--and thought about all the ugly shit that I had seen before I was as old as they were. I felt like a monster, sometimes, when the girls would come and talk to me and cry on my shoulder. Their gaydar seemed to be in perfect working order and they knew it was safe to tell cute Mr. Krycek all their troubles, he wasn't going to grab them on the ass and suggest that giving him a blowjob would solve everything. Teaching a couple of them some self-defense moves solved their problems just fine, and somehow I wound up teaching a girls' self-defense class as well as coaching the basketball team. Why the hell they wanted a one-armed man to coach the basketball team, I'll never know, but my star center told me their last coach was only 5'2", so why wonder?

I read up on everything I'd forgotten and studied harder than any of my students. I wrote out lesson plans, made up quizzes, and graded papers. Mulder, who was teaching at the local college as well as practicing psychology, helped me master the educational jargon enough to satisfy my bosses. His hacker buddies forged the certification and other credentials I needed to teach in a public school. I got up at six, washed and dressed, drove my new Saturn to the school, and did my thing from 8:30 to 4:00. And after that, I came home to Mulder, Scully, and Skinner, and the baby. Emmalissa. Okay, it wasn't hard to admit to myself that I didn't want to leave her; it was just hard to admit it to Mulder. And to admit that I envied what they had here, and that I didn't want to leave Mulder. Not that a threesome with your former work partner and former boss is exactly normal in a statistical sense, but they did live a frighteningly normal life in most respects. Scully'd come home from the police station, and Mulder from the college further upstate, and Skinner from the hardware store--he was the manager--and me from the high school, and we'd all have dinner together. They took turns cooking, as well as doing other household chores, and it was Scully who persuaded me to join the rotation. "C'm'on, Alex, it can't be any worse than Mulder's cooking, and we've all survived that."

"Oh, right, see if I turn up in *your* bed, Mrs. Skinner!" Mulder threw in, and she swatted him with the oven mitt. There was a lot of that kind of teasing all the time, especially between Mulder and Scully and then between Mulder and Skinner. It made me feel lonely sometimes--I'd lie in bed by myself, wondering what they were doing in Skinner's huge bed while I was getting friendly with my one good hand--but nobody complained about my cooking, or sent me away when we all settled down to watch a video. Emmalissa had a smile for me just as she did for Mommy and Daddy and Mulder, and I had a smile for her.

Still, after a few months, I started to get itchy. It started as a literal itch around the stump of my arm that spread down into a phantom itch along the length of the missing limb. I have a pretty sophisticated prosthesis now; it's sensitive to extreme heat or cold and to other things that would cause pain if it were real, like acids, and the fingers work almost like normal, but it doesn't itch, and it doesn't feel anything *good*, either. The phantom arm itched, and I'd scratch at the fake one, which didn't help, and think about running away.

I wasn't used to being normal. I hadn't lived in one place more than six months or a year since I was in college, and I'd started college early. It freaked me out to come home and see a meal on the table that somebody else cooked for me. It freaked me out when the three of them slowly started calling me Alex and referring to me as Uncle Alex around the baby. Nobody called me Alex, not even my last living relative, my mother's cousin, a 90-year-old lady who'd forgotten all her English and called me by my baby name, Sascha.

I itched and I fretted and I started losing sleep, and that's how matters stood the night Walter seduced me. It was after nine o'clock and raining pretty hard when I got home from the basketball game. We'd been having a good season--I was proud of my guys, of myself--but the other team beat us tonight; they were just plain better. It hadn't been raining when I'd left the house in the morning, so I got soaked running from the rear door of the gymnasium to my car. I was dripping like a big dog when I parked my Saturn in the garage and ambled into the kitchen.

Miles Davis was wailing from somewhere, and Walter was standing at the stove, barefoot, stirring a pot of soup. I shut the door behind him, dropped my briefcase, and took a deep breath, just drinking in the scents of rosemary and bay, thyme and garlic. Whatever it was, it was going to taste great.

Skinner turned, still moving the wooden spoon with his hand, and gave me an unexpected smile. "You look like a drownded rat, as my cousin Jerry used to say."

"Your cousin Jerry was illiterate," I observed. I slicked back my hair with both hands.

"Not illiterate, just ungrammatical." Walter dropped the wooden spoon into the pot. "Here, let me help you."

I just stood there as he took my windbreaker off and hung it up, kicked my soaked shoes out of the way once I toed them off. He even handed me a towel for my hair. Wiping my head off with my bad hand, I felt my way through the house with the other hand and up the stairs to my room at the top of the steps, over the garage, wondering if he was going to follow me and offer to help me change my clothes, too. And what I would say to him if he did.

When I came back down to the kitchen, in shorts and a bathrobe because I'd forgotten to do any laundry and there was nothing else clean, there were two bowls of soup and two glasses of wine on the table, and the oil lamp with the dried rosemary tucked under its domewas flickering in the dimness.

"Where's Mulder and Dana?"

"On their way to Seattle to visit Charlie and his wife. I couldn't get out of working this weekend, so Mulder said he'd go."

I sat down and reached for the glass of wine, racking my brains to remember who Charlie was and if I was even supposed to know. The peppery taste of the wine distracted me--probably a good Pinot Noir. Walter liked good food and wine, and living with him had improved my tastes enormously, not to mention put at least five pounds on me already. I was starting to lose that lean and hungry look Jennie Morton had joked about. Her pastrami hadn't hurt, either.

"Dig in." Walter picked up his spoon, and I took a big mouthful of savory lentils and tender potatoes in broth. The man was always urging me to eat.

"Damn, that's good."

We stuffed ourselves in happy silence for a few minutes, then Walter topped off our glasses of wine. "How'd the game go?"

I grimaced. "They played well, but we lost. The other team was just better, dammit. A Portland team."

"Here's to next time." Walter raised his glass, and I clinked mine with his. The wine buzzed in my head like bees on a summer day.

"They're a good team. They work hard." I shook my head. "Christ knows why."

"You give them something to work toward." He saw my quizzical look but just savored his wine.

I hardly had to ask for a second helping; it appeared in the bowl as soon as I thought of asking for it. Like I said, Walter likes wine and food, and of the four of us, he's actually the best cook; he puts the most into it, enjoys it the most, and gets the best results. His meals aren't just something thrown together, like my cooking or Mulder's, or a recipe followed with forensic precision, like most of Scully's meals. Skinner's the one who's always using the bread machine and keeping the breadbox full, cooking batches of soup and stew and casseroles and freezing them like the Frugal Gourmet or Julia Child. Real soup stock, probably chicken, had gone into this lentil stew. Walter's cooking had put meat on my bones and now was giving me a kind of peace I never thought I'd know.

Leaning back in the creaky wooden chair, I wiped my mouth, sighed, and then raised both arms for a stretch, groaning. Walter got up, rinsed the empty bowls, put them in the dishwasher. Have I mentioned he's compulsively neat and clean?

"Feeling stiff?"

"Yup. Gettin' too old to chase little boys around the basketball court." I grinned, thinking about how much fun coaching basketball was... not that I'd ever really admit it.

I started when Walter came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. He has big, heavy hands. "Relax." It was an order, in the old A.D. voice I remembered. Walter started kneading the tense muscles, concentrating more on my right side. I tend to overwork that side, to compensate. After a couple of minutes, I *did* start to relax; Walter's broad, blunt fingers dug into the tightest spots with just the right amount of aggression, and I had to clench my jaw shut against little grunts of happy pain.

His voice against my ear startled me again. "Don't hold it in, Alex... let it out." The big hands on my shoulders drifted down to splay across my chest, and the lips that had just brushed the rim of my ear settled moistly on the back of my neck. 

"Jesus, Walter...." All of a sudden I was hard as a rock and sweating, leaking fear and desire in equal measure. Walter's fingers were teasing my nipples into anxious spikes; then they slid back up to knead my shoulders again.

"If you want this, Alex, it's yours. I'm yours...." Skinner's voice was so dark and heavy, like the fumes of savory soup and dark red wine... My head was already spinning, maybe I was imagining this, maybe I'd fallen asleep at the table and this was just some really good alcoholic dream.... But I'd never dreamt anything like this before, with or without alcohol.

I looked up over his shoulder to say something, anything, and Walter was kissing me. A slow kiss as sensuous as the massage of my shoulders, as savory as the spicy lentil soup. Walter's fingers glided up the side of my neck, caressed my scalp, petted my hair. Damn, this felt good. I almost wanted to purr.

I didn't say no when Walter's hand wrapped around mine and tugged. I couldn't say anything. I just went up the steps after Walter, my head floating along like a balloon on a string, wondering where my feet had gone. Walter led me down the hall to his own room, to the king-sized bed covered with a plum-colored comforter, the orgy bed as I always thought of it. I knew it could hold all three of them. Was there room in it tonight for me?

What was real? what wasn't? Was the past real, in which I'd had to hurt Skinner, badly, in order to control him and protect Mulder? Or was the present the reality--Walter's firm mouth, his warm chest, his broad hands clutching my ass? With the last of my sanity, I heard toenails clicking in the hall, a thud, and the thick wet sound of Moose's breathing coming from the rug at the foot of the bed. This was reality. This was now.

For the first time in a while I found himself wishing for my missing hand. I couldn't feel the rasp of Walter's whiskers, the dryness of the brown nipples under the greying pelt, the thin velvet skin over the granite hardness of Walter's cock. My artificial hand could touch but it couldn't caress; it could grasp but not hold, clutch but not coax. I only had one hand with which to respond to Walter's generosity by touching him back, and I wasn't even sure I could respond, but I kept that hand busy as Walter laid me down, kissed me, peeled off my boxers, fondled my chest and belly and thighs.

"Please," a hoarse whisper that I guessed was me, and I almost yelled with pleasure as a strong hand closed around my aching cock. Walter's tongue flickered like butterfly wings against my nipples. The man took no prisoners when it came to sex. He stroked me steady, teasing my chest and throat with lips and tongue, until my cock was slick and twitching in his hand and my breath rasped in and out like a dying man's.

"What do you want, Alex?" The old challenging Skinner tone, the words bitten off between barely parted teeth, the lips immobile. "You want me to take you? fuck you? Or do you want to fuck me?"

Being given the choice, while my cock was trapped in Walter's big hand, was almost enough to take me over the edge right then. Panting, I tried to push words from brain to tongue, past the wall of blinding desire that stood in their way.

"Please... please... I can't--I can't...."

He seemed to know, to understand. Another kiss on the mouth, so tender, nobody's ever been that tender, and Walter coaxed me onto my side, lying on the good arm, his arm under my neck. I couldn't help pushing back against the fingers that eased up into my ass, slick and careful. Walter was gentle and thorough and I kept moaning and shivering, Christ! so pathetic, still thirsty for tenderness wherever I might find it. Tears flooded my eyes and I squeezed them shut, tight, hoping none would get out.

I waited, the false arm lying heavy on the bed next to me, dragging me forward like a chain, during the ripping of the paper and the slick crinkle of the condom going on. Then Walter was easing himself in, big, so damn big, I stuttered and choked on my feelings as Walter Skinner took me and the sweet burn of it went all through me. It had been so long...

When Walter was all the way in, he wrapped both arms around me, tight. "You're not going anywhere, Krycek," he growled, stirring the fine hairs at the back of my neck. "You're staying right here. With us." He pulled out and thrust back in hard.

We rocked slowly together for what seemed like a long time. Walter must have been in no hurry to make me come or to come himself; except for that one thrust, he moved so gently that it was a long time before I started to crave more attention to my cock. I didn't ask as soon as I felt the urge; I waited, still shivering but somehow trusting Walter to give me what I needed without my asking. Walter took hold of me again just as I thought I couldn't stand it any more, not even stroking me but just bracing me, fist on cock, as his thrusts accelerated, pushing deeper and harder.

I heard myself cry out as I came, and I felt Walter's face pressed between my shoulder blades, muffling his noises as he came. Then I lay there, limp all over, panting, feeling like something was breaking up inside me. Breaking up, heading south, melting, like a glacier.... It took me a while to notice that I was crying, actually weeping and sobbing in Walter Skinner's arms, broken at last.

Walter fondled me and petted me, whispering in my ear, meaningless "all right" noises. It was almost like how he talked to the dog except that his cock was still up my ass. I hated myself for being weak, but it felt so good that I couldn't make myself move away. I didn't even know what I was crying for, for Chrissake. Maybe for everything. It was worse than that breakdown I'd had in the shower; at least Mulder had been the only witness to that.

"You're not going anywhere," Skinner said again. I grabbed onto those words and tried to make sense of this whole thing.

"So what was this for, Skinner? Some kind of pity fuck?"

He pulled out of me, carefully, and then rolled me over so I was facing him, not carefully at all. "Pity fuck? I don't fuck people out of pity, Alex. Haven't you been listening? I said you're not going anywhere."

"What makes you think I would?"

"Because you're having too much fun." He snuck up on me with a tissue and wiped my face. I tried to swat his hand away. "Because life is too normal, too good. It scares you. You think we haven't seen you scratching that itch that isn't there? You want to run away--somebody has to convince you that you belong."

I just stared into his eyes, feeling like he'd fucking read my mind. The corners of his mouth twitched--if it were anyone else, I'd say he smirked--and he went on, "And to let you know that it's safe for you to make a move on Mulder." He pinched my ass. "You want to do it, he wants you to, and Scully and I are tired of waiting and watching you two. So do it."

******

It was Mulder's turn to sleep with the baby, and Alex had gone out for the evening, muttering something about a bar and some decent vodka. I treated myself to a nice long peach-scented bath, with lots of bubbles, then put on a pretty nightgown, pale green, like spring leaves--Walter likes to see me in shades of green--and went to my husband's bedroom.

Walter had undressed down to his briefs and was changing the sheets. For a moment I just stood there, watching his back, his buttocks, his thighs as he stretched over the bed, tucking in the clean sheet; then I cleared my throat. "I take it your plan worked?"

He turned his head and gave me a very wicked grin over his shoulder. "Anyone ever told you that you're a voyeur, Mrs. Skinner?"

I smiled back. "Only my husband and our lover, Mr. Skinner."

I padded over to him and into a big hug, a very erotic kiss. Marriage allows for all kinds of kisses--sweet ones, affectionate ones, silly ones, absent-minded ones, even angry-but-I-still-love-you ones. Not every kiss means "You turn me on so much I want to have sex with you this minute," but this kiss did. Walter is a very good kisser and I love it when he comes on all alpha male like that.

I helped him finish putting on the bedlinens and then hopped onto the bed, sprawling out in the middle of it in the sexiest pose I could manage. The silly grin on my face would have spoiled the effect for anyone but my two adorable men.

"So tell me all about it," I said, and giggled when Walter pounced. I relaxed under 225 pounds of warm, hairy, very interested male.

He nuzzled me and growled against my throat. "You want to hear how I seduced Alex Krycek?"

"Yeah...."

"Bad old Alex Krycek, the one-armed assassin...?" The words were somewhat muffled by my breasts.

"Alex Krycek, the man who made it possible for me to have a daughter, who lives over my garage because he can't get more than 5 miles away from her without going into a panic."

Walter kissed the middle of my chest and sighed, rolling over to lie beside me. "It's sad, really. He's like... I don't mean to put him down, but making love with him is like petting an old dog that's never known anything but beating. He's just not used to being touched with anything like tenderness. He craves it, but then it also scares the shit out of him."

I reached over and ran my fingers lightly over Walter's face, down over his greying chest. Greying, but very firm. "You're good at tenderness, Walter. This was the right thing to do."

He took my hand and kissed my fingertips, one at a time. "A little red wine... a little lentil stew... a little neck rub... the guy was putty in my hands."

I draped my leg over his. He'd somehow shed his briefs before climbing on top of me. "You make it easy to surrender, Walter."

He shook his head, slowly. "It wasn't easy for Alex. But he did. He could've turned me away--could've pulled a gun and blown my head off--but he came to bed with me, instead."

I arched my back a little, hoping Walter would notice the nipples showing through my thin gown. "I think Alex is relieved that his life no longer depends on pulling a gun and blowing someone away. None of us is as young as we used to be."

Walter slipped his arm around me and ran his hand down my back to cup it under my ass. "That just means I can hold out longer, Mrs. Skinner."

He gave me a delightful squeeze with one hand and pulled down the loose neck of my gown with the other. Oh, wonderful... warm lips and sharp teeth and hot tongue on my nipples, so nice.... I'd been wet and squirming ever since Walter and I discussed his seducing Alex, and it had been a few days since I'd gotten any. Not counting taking care of myself: I'd had an intense fantasy about Walter doing Alex, accompanied by two intense orgasms. After all, I'd spent more than five years now in a relationship with two men--would I be where I am right now if I didn't find it arousing to watch two men make love?

For a little while I forgot about Alex Krycek's emotional and sexual needs and concentrated on my own. Walter gave my breasts the attention they needed and teased my belly and thighs with his fingertips. He moved down between my legs when I spread them so wide that it threatened to push him out of bed a nd drove my crazy by kissing and licking my inner thighs, sucking on that one spot that makes me come--until I did.

I was cross-eyed and panting. He kissed my mound, trailing one finger down into my folds. I was almost swimming in my own arousal. "Your pussy's all wet, Dana. You want me to lick it?"

"Please...."

Mulder loves giving head, but Walter is no slouch, either. As soon as either of them go down on me, I start making noises that I fear will wake the baby or draw the police or something. Walter delves into all the intricacies of me, licking me like honey in a comb; he likes to put his fingers up inside me while he licks me, and to tease my asshole with his fingertip. He did all of those things now, and I arched and writhed and bucked and wailed, riding a wave that was either one big orgasm or a lot of little ones, but either way, it was very, very good.

When I finally went limp, sighing happily, Walter kissed his way back up my torso to my mouth.

"I smell so good on you," I observed.

He wrapped his arms around me. "You smell good, Mrs. Skinner." Another kiss that was redolent of me. "And taste good, too."

Even after so long, it still amazes me sometimes that I'm married to Walter. The three of us agreed that my marrying him would provide the best cover story for our triune relationship and offer financial protection for me as well. In other words, it was entirely pragmatic, we thought. Yet actually becoming husband and wife brought us closer in a new way, without excluding Mulder. It was no strain acting like husband and wife in public; marriage suited me, much to my surprise. And I had the fleeting thought that maybe it was supposed to work out this way--maybe Mulder needed Krycek, ultimately, more than he needed me or Walter. Maybe Walter and I needed each other more than we knew.

I turned in Walter's arms, nuzzling his chest and running my hand down his side, over his thigh, to take hold of his cock. It rubbed itself enthusiastically into my hand.

"I love your cock," I said dreamily, fondling him. I loved the hardness of it under silky, fragile-feeling skin, the heat of it, way the big blunt head felt as it slipped inside of me.

"The feeling is mutual," Walter purred. He thrust gently into my grip.

"It's lucky for you that Mulder and I are both size queens," I teased. He shivered when I rubbed the sensitive spot just beneath the glans.

"I hope I didn't hurt Alex... he didn't say anything...."

The mental image those words conjured up made me shiver in turn. "Did you fuck him?"

Walter groaned. "Yeah."

"You fucked that pretty ass?" I slipped down in the bed and mouthed my husband's cock, delicately, just tasting the head. He moaned in approval.

"I would've let him fuck me. But I think I gave him what he wanted."

I cupped his balls in my hand, large and heavy, breathing in the scent of him, always pungent and sharp. I went down on him once, then pulled away. "Show me how you fucked him."

Walter turned me over, onto my right side, and spooned up behind me. I fumbled in the nightstand and got out the lube. "I wanna fuck your pussy," my husband growled.

"Uh-huh...." Quickly I dabbed the lube between my folds and over the tip of his cock. Walter wrapped his arms around me and slowly sank in.

"I held him... like this...." Soft, wet kiss on the back of my neck. "Told him he wasn't going anywhere." He pulled out and shoved in, hard; I moaned as the pleasure peaked. "And I fucked him slow... like this...."

I closed my eyes and let Walter rock into and out of me, no hurry, thinking about Alex lying here in his arms, taking this big cock up his ass. Walter would have been careful, gentle, even if he didn't consciously think about it. He'd taken me that way, though not often--it wasn't easy, he was so big, almost too big for me that way--but he was always careful, considerate. He'd always been a considerate lover without making me feel like a fragile flower, and I loved that about him. He was tender when I needed tenderness and rough when I needed roughness. I knew Alex needed tenderness, lots of tenderness.... I whimpered in my throat, and Walter's splayed hand stroked down my belly to cover my mound.

"And when he needed it," he whispered, talking between his teeth as he used to, "I took hold of his cock--"

His arms tightened around me as I went crazy, lost in the avalanche. His cock deep inside me, the pressure against my ass, his fingers hard on my clit now, and I completely lost control, growling like a madwoman, demanding more on clit and in my cunt until Walter groaned deep in his throat and flooded me with his pleasure. We both fell asleep on the inevitable wet spot.

******

I got back from the bar late, very late. Stayed there till they closed at two and then wandered the streets, hands in my pockets, staring at my shoes and thinking. By the time I slipped in the front door, it must have been after three, I knew what I had to do. It was now or never, I decided. Either I did what Skinner said and made a move on Mulder, or I got out now. Either I got out now, or I'd be trapped here forever, a high school teacher in Kroeber, Oregon.

I couldn't be a normal person. I wasn't capable.

The Skinner-Mulder house had good security for a private home, but I've busted out of some pretty tight spots without leaving a trace. I could pack the essentials in one suitcase and leave now, before it was light. Before anyone heard me. Before I could change my fucking mind.

I didn't even turn on the lamp in my bedroom. Enough moonlight came through my window, past the pretty chintz curtains, for me to dig my suitcase out of the closet, toss it on the bed, and start putting stuff in.

Guns, knives, and a bit of plastic explosive. Can't have that in a house with a child, right? Socks, underwear, a handful of silk ties. Fuck the suits, leave them behind. Jeans, t-shirts, khakis. Five dress shirts and a navy blazer. Black boots on my feet, black Nikes into the suitcase. The hardback copy of _The Lord of the Rings_ I'd bought with my first paycheck from the school, and half a dozen beat-up paperbacks I've had since *I* was in high school. That should do it. Wait, one more thing--

I turned to the nightstand and was reaching out for the framed photograph when I heard Mulder say my name.

"Alex--"

I couldn't turn around. I couldn't. I knew what I would see if I did. Shit.

"Alex. Turn around."

Bastard. My hand closed on the photograph, and I turned.

Mulder was standing in my doorway, sleep in his eyes, the baby in his arms. Fuck. Mulder in shorts and t-shirts, all long legs and tousled hair in the moonlight, and the baby. Emmalissa. They called her by the nickname I had given her.

"Just where the fuck do you think you're going, Alex?"

He spoke in a sweet, sing-songy voice, like he was saying something to the baby. I swallowed hard.

"Somewhere else, Mulder. Somewhere I can be myself." I turned away and fumbled with my suitcase, tucking stuff in and then trying to get the lid to close.

"Yourself. Who's that, Alex? What self?" Mulder still sounded like he might be talking in his sleep.

"You know, Mulder. Alex Krycek. The man who killed your father, arranged for Scully to be abducted, poisoned Skinner with nanocytes, et cetera, et cetera." The damned lid did not want to close.

I heard Mulder shift his weight behind me, and the baby made a cooing noise. "Oh. That Alex Krycek." It sounded like he took a step closer. "What about the Alex Krycek who spent vast amounts of his own money, and risked getting shot on sight, to bring a baby into the lives of the people he'd hurt?" He definitely took another step closer, and I had to fight my impulse to edge away. "And isn't that the same Alex Krycek who teaches history at Le Guin High and is the best damned basketball coach they've had in twenty years?"

"Fuck, Mulder, I can't do this!" I moved so fast I just about jumped across the bed, trying to get away from him. Him and Emmalissa. "I can't live a normal life--I'm not a normal person--this is wrong, this is just wrong--"

"Alex."

I shut up.

Mulder switched the baby from one arm to the other and jiggled her gently. "I have two answers to that. They contradict each other, but they're both true." He smiled down at the baby. "As Niels Bohr said, the opposite of a true fact is a falsehood, but the opposite of a profound truth is usually another profound truth."

I wondered who the hell was Niels Bohr and what did his wacko theories have to do with the situation. I was sweating.

"One answer is that this isn't a very normal life you're living." He kissed the baby. "Living in the house of your former enemies, who are having a permanent menage a trois, along with the baby you engineered for them--you call that normal?"

Despite myself, I snorted.

"And the other answer," he started walking the baby up and down, rocking her, "is that you *are* living a normal life, and doing a good job of it. You get up five days a week and go to the classroom and teach. You're a good teacher, from what I hear. You coach the basketball team. You take your turn with cooking and cleaning and looking after Emmalissa. You're good with Emmy, and you're not a bad cook, either." Mulder smiled. "If that isn't normal life, I don't know what is. And you're *good* at it. It's not so hard, once you get the hang of it." He suddenly made a face. "Uh-oh, I think the poop factory is at it again. Be right back."

I should've left then. Should've gone out the window with nothing but my old jacket and my portable armory, just like the old days. I didn't. I sat down on the bed and tried not to cry.

"Alex."

Mulder was back, empty-handed now.

"Where's the baby?"

"With her mom. Scully ran into me in the hallway and offered." He sat down beside me on the bed. "Don't go, Alex. Walter and Scully want you here. *I* want you here. And I'm sure if Emmy could talk, she'd say she wants you here, too."

That was a low blow, Mulder. But maybe it was what I deserved. I've been an evil person, I've cheated and lied and killed. Maybe I deserved, somehow, to have Mulder sitting next to me doing that puppy-dog pout and telling me the baby wanted me here, too. Maybe the big karmic computer knew that was exactly what would be the most torture for me.

I didn't want to leave Mulder. I didn't want to leave Emmy. But I had to, didn't I? Didn't I?

"No, Alex. You don't."

Christ, did I say that out loud? I must have. The karmic computer really had it in for me.

"Mulder--"

He kissed me.

I never would have thought I could forget the taste of Mulder's mouth, what it felt like to kiss him. But I had forgotten. Goddammit, it was so good I did start crying, the bastard. I felt like I'd been crying ever since I dropped the baby off here and somehow never got out the door, and it was all Mulder's fault. Had to be Mulder's fault.

He pulled back and took my face in his hands, wiping the tears off my cheeks with his thumbs. Nobody'd done that for me since I was a little boy. Hell, maybe nobody'd ever done it before.

"Alex...." He looked at me like he wanted to say something else, then shook his head and just latched onto me again, kissing.

By the time his hands got under my jacket and under my shirt, onto my bare back, I figured I'd better either put a stop to this or start participating a little more. So I stuck out my elbow in a maneuver the FBI Academy had never taught me and toppled him onto his back. We kissed some more, a lot more, with me lying half on top of him, both of us grinding against each other. No hurry. Emmy was with Mom and Dad, and Mulder and Uncle Alex were doing just fine together. I groaned and it had nothing to do with sex, realizing that if I went through with this--if I stayed--Uncle Alex was exactly what I would be.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Okay, good." He rolled me over and started trying to pull my shirt off.

No hurry. If I stayed, I stayed. If I stayed, I'd be Uncle Alex, I'd be Mr. Krycek the History Teacher, Coach Krycek the One-Armed Wonder. I'd be Walter Skinner's housemate. I'd eat Scully's cooking and she'd eat mine. I'd be... normal. Sort of. It would, in a way, be freakier than the life I used to have. I found I liked the idea.

I liked it even better when Mulder got my cock out of my jeans and started getting reacquainted with it. I flashed on a memory of our past relationship, him on his knees, tied up, my cock down his throat, and felt bad about it. I could admit, now, that I'd done that scene with him just to keep him at arm's length--close but not too close. I'd wanted to fuck him and not fall for him.

It didn't work then, and it wouldn't work now.

I ran my fingers through Mulder's hair and tugged him back. "Your turn."

He skinned out of his clothes then like a snake doing a high-speed skin change. Presto changeo, naked Mulder. I slid off the bed onto my knees, dragging him after me, and spent a long time working my way down his throat and over his chest, getting his nipples shiny wet, working over his belly and thighs and making all the little hairs down there stand up at attention. Years of doing without one hand had given my mouth even more practice than it used to get, and I was good. I know I was good. 

I got my tongue up his asshole and he let out a really loud shriek. I grinned. "Mulder! shh, the baby."

"Fuck you, Alex--no, wait, fuck me." He half sat up. "I want you to fuck me."

My cock quivered and my stomach churned. "Have you got--"

"Be right back." He sprinted out. Of course he had condoms and lube; he'd been doing it with Walter. Well, I hoped he'd have condoms. Not that we were any too careful in the old days.

I slithered out of the rest of my clothes, thought about it a moment, and unstrapped the prosthetic, too. I was propping it against the nightstand when he came back, shutting the door.

I turned and straightened up. "This is me, Mulder. This is it."

He dropped stuff on the bed and walked around it, put his hand on my shoulder. My left shoulder. "Does it hurt?"

"It's always a little sore, from the prosthetic." I shrugged. "And I still get phantom pains."

He squeezed my shoulder. "I won't touch it, then. Unless you ask me to." He leaned in and kissed my cheek.

I watched him scoot the bottle of lube and the condoms out of the way and lie down on the bed, on his back. I felt awkward, freakish; my dick was wilting. "Mulder, how are we gonna...."

"I have a plan. Just c'm'ere, okay?" He gave me something halfway between his shy, rare smile and a lascivious leer. I complied and lay down next to him.

It's not fun, lying or leaning on the stump, but I can do it. I did it and ignored the pain for the couple minutes it took me to slick Mulder up. He didn't need much loosening, but it felt so good to touch him, to sink my fingers into his ass, that I didn't want to stop. I took a couple sucks of his cock, in passing, until he finally bucked down my throat and snarled. "Quit futzing around, Alex, and fuck me already."

Laughing, I got up onto my knees and crawled around his right leg. Kneeling between his thighs, I slipped onto the condom he opened for me, squirted some more goop on it, and then looked at him. He put his hands on my chest, just beside where the arm joins the torso.

"You can lean forward, Alex."

I did. I had to. I leaned on Mulder and his arms braced me while I guided my cock into his asshole. We both groaned, and I got my own arm under me and slid all the way home.

"Jesus...." I sincerely meant that as a prayer.

Mulder's eyes were squeezed shut. His chest was heaving. His arms trembled, holding me up. Keeping me there, helping me do this. He'd never fought me when I dominated him, when I'd tied him up and whipped him and fucked him. I'd never fought him when he tried to beat the shit out of me, even when he used a public telephone receiver to do it. Now we'd probably fight about who was on top this time and how the used condoms were piling up beside the bed. "Jesus," I said again, still praying. A few decades to fuck and suck each other and to fight about stupid shit. Maybe God would be let me live long enough to have that, in spite of everything.

I made it the longest, slowest fuck I've ever managed. I concentrated on how it felt, every inch, every millimeter, in and out. The grip of Mulder's ass and the texture of the condom. The smell of his sweat and mine, mine sharp, his ripe. The whorls of his fingerprints against my chest and the whisper of his cock against my belly when he moved a certain way. The path of the moonlight crossing the room, his face, the pillow, and his eyes the color of limes in that light. The dizzy, light-headed feeling of not being able to hold back, the inevitability of fucking him harder, panting high and fast while Mulder grunted with every thrust. And the moment when I took my hand off the mattress, the moment before I came, and leaned all my weight on Mulder's trembling arms while I wrapped my hand around his cock so we could come together.

Perfect.

His arms bent, finally, and let me down to lie on top of him. He put his arms around me, tight. I wiped my hand on the bedspread and then wound it into his hair. We were both crying.

"I think I'll stay," I said at last.

"Good."

******

Epilogue

It was always Uncle Alex who told me the truth about things. Which was ironic, as it turned out. He always shot from the hip--a joke which goes beyond being ironic into being poor taste. But have you ever stopped to think about how rarely adults tell children the truth? I could count on Uncle Alex. If a shot from the doctor was going to hurt, he would tell me how much and how long the hurt would last and what could be done to make it better. If someone had died, he said they had died and not that they had "gone to heaven" or "passed on". If he told me to do something, he always had a reason for it, and the reason always made sense. And if he said I wasn't acting very smart, well, that was harsh criticism from his lips.

I knew that Uncle Alex wasn't really my uncle, he wasn't Mom's brother or Dad's, and that he had more money than Mom and Dad or even than Mulder, for some reason. I knew that Mulder hated his first name and hated being called "Uncle" and that he loved me. I knew Mulder and Uncle Alex loved each other in pretty much the same way Mom and Dad did. I knew that Mom and Dad and Mulder all used to work for the FBI, once upon a time, and I figured Uncle Alex did, too. When I asked him about it, he gave me what I already thought of, back then, as "Uncle Alex's naughty grin" and just said, "Yeah, I did. For a while."

When you're a child, you take for granted that whatever goes on in your house is what's normal. Unfortunately, if your dad beats your mom or sticks his hand under your panties or lays around all day drinking, you think that's normal, and it doesn't occur to you to complain. In my case, I figured it was normal for kids to have extra grownups to look after them besides just a mommy and a daddy. I figured it was normal for your parents to be around fifty years older than you were, instead of just twenty or thirty. I figured it was normal for two men to fall in love and live together. I figured it was normal to have guns in the house and I understood I was never, ever to touch them. After all, Mom was a police detective, and she and Dad and Mulder and Uncle Alex had all been FBI, that was like the police only bigger, right? I figured everybody had a dog and a cat and a bird and fish. The dog was Dad's, the cat belonged to Uncle Alex, the bird was Mom's, and the fish were Mulder's. There were lots of jokes about killing the fish that I didn't understand.

Then when I was about ten, Mom told me about menstruation and sexual reproduction. With her it wasn't the birds and the bees, no sir, it was all very correct and clinical and didn't sound like very much fun. I also learned that while she used to be a doctor, she was the kind of doctor who examined dead people and figured out how they had died. That gave me a few bad dreams, although I didn't tell Mom about them. Uncle Alex came in one night, hearing me whimper in my dreams. He showed me his gun and told me he would kill anyone or anything that hurt me. No more bad dreams. My family would always take care of me.

Two years later, Uncle Alex told me a few facts about reproduction that Mom had left out, and we had the only really bad family argument I can remember. Mom and I had been arguing about something, I think about a bunch of teen magazines I had bought, you know, all fashion and pretty boys' faces. She said she was concerned about how much money I was spending without prior permission, but I knew what she was really mad about and I said so. She was offended that I was interested in normal girly things. When she was that age, Mom was a big tomboy and wanted to do heroic stuff and save the world. Me, I just wanted to have a good hair day and maybe not have an argument with Mom or with my friend Claire.

Uncle Alex happened to come into the kitchen and start on dinner while we were snarling at each other. Then he said something that just made Mom go white--I mean, even whiter than usual. He said, "Ease up on her, Scully, let her have her fun. It's not as if she's a clone of you."

She turned white like fresh snow and gave him one of those looks--the Look of Death, Mulder called it (when Mom wasn't listening). Then she got up and walked out of the kitchen without another word. I helped Uncle Alex some with dinner, and a few days later, when I had the chance, I asked him what he'd meant by that.

That question led down a road I'd never even imagined, let alone wanted to travel. In one marathon conversation, I found out what Mom and Mulder's job used to be, and how they came to know Uncle Alex, and how I wasn't really the daughter of Mom's niece Amy and her boyfriend who'd been killed in a car crash.

I freaked out. I just lost it. Uncle Alex made it clear that Mom and Dad did not want me to know this, not yet, and that Mulder didn't want to cross them on this, and that I should keep it to myself. I didn't keep it to myself. I practically jumped my mom when she got home from work--she nearly drew her gun--and yelled, "Why did you lie to me? Why didn't you tell me?"

It was bad. Really bad. I never knew Mom could scream so loud. Nobody ever spanked me or smacked me or raised their voice to me, and now they were all shouting at each other like maniacs. I wasn't even sure why Mom and Dad were so mad at Uncle Alex, or at Mulder, who hadn't had anything to do with what Alex had told me. I tried to say something, tried to calm things down, but finally I had to get up on the couch and jump up and down, up and down. I was screaming, "I just wanted to know the truth! You knew it all along! Why didn't you tell me the truth?"

All four of them shut up, just like switching off a tv. I stood there on the couch with my fists clenched, red in the face, probably, and they stared at me. Nobody was more surprised than me when Mulder laughed.

"Well, she's our daughter, isn't she? She just wants to know the truth."

They laughed so hard they got hysterical. I didn't understand any of it and went to my bedroom in a huff. But over the next few days, Mom, Dad, and Mulder each talked to me about things. About the Consortium, and what it was, who was part of it, and how it almost let aliens take over the earth, except that my parents--all four of them--had prevented the invasion. About the two babies Mom had had before me, and how they had died, and how she couldn't have children. About how Mom and Dad and Mulder loved each other, and how they still went their separate ways after the invasion was prevented and Doggett and Reyes took over the X-Files, and how they got back together and settled in Kroeber because Dad got really sick once and needed them both. About what Uncle Alex used to do for a living, how he lost his arm, what he had to do with Dad's weird illness, and how he persuaded a bunch of mad scientists to make a baby of bits of Mom and Dad, and Mulder. And how that was me.

It explained my nose, I guess. And my height, and my brown eyes. I don't know how much of it I really believed at the time. Uncle Alex would look at me, and nod, and say, "It's all true, Vasilissa," and that scared me. Those solemn green eyes wouldn't lie to me.

I tried to be as normal as possible during my teen years. Normal in the sense that I tried the same stuff other kids did and made the same mistakes. I tried cigarettes and weed and once some kind of uppers. I broke curfew, I drank when I was underage. I hung out with girls who talked about me behind my back and dated guys who definitely were not good enough for me. But I never went too far. And I didn't have sex till I was away at college--pretty late, even for a small-town girl like me. Why? Because Uncle Alex might teach high school history, and Mulder might be a shrink, and Dad might run the hardware store, and Mom might be the only person in the family who still carried a gun every day, but they were all very dangerous people. Uncle Alex taught me how to fend off a guy who wouldn't take no for an answer, and when I broke Billy Jespersen's hand because he put it in the wrong place, Dad just paid his medical bill and said, "Good girl."

So I went away to college. I went back east. I didn't really know what I was interested in, except for one thing: my past. I was interested in my past, my parents' history, and whether all those weird stories I'd heard were true. The stories about Tooms, who could squeeze through a rainspout, and the aliens who could change shape and look like anybody, and the town where all the circus people lived, with the guy who ate nails and how Mom ate a cricket, and Eddie van Blundht and Jose Chung and all the things they'd hinted at but never described.

I went back east and looked up people I had heard about but never met. I talked to Melvin Frohike, Ringo Langly, and John Byers, who used to publish a newspaper called _The Lone Gunman_. I talked to John Doggett, who was retired now as well. With the help of the Gunmen, I even found Marita Covarrubias, who used to work with Uncle Alex--a frighteningly beautiful woman, beautiful like the Snow Queen in Andersen's fairy tale, who was in a wheelchair and could only move her face and one arm. Uncle Alex's money was taking care of her. They were surprised to hear from me, but in one way or another, they all corroborated the family stories. They'd all been there. They knew the truth.

I didn't move back to Kroeber after graduation. Dad had died while I was in college, collapsing with a massive heart attack that wiped him out in minutes. He was the oldest of my four parents. I flew home for the funeral, then went back to the East Coast and stayed there. I moved to New York after graduation, spent a few years dicking around--as Uncle Alex would say--with theater, with writing, with waiting tables and dreaming dreams. I had a few dinners with John Byers, who was sweetly protective of me, and found myself going into journalism, writing for online magazines, creating a weblog that somehow became enormously popular. I went home for visits, sure, for Christmas and Easter, Thanksgiving (most of the time); I even brought home a couple of boyfriends. Only a couple. Both of them were weirded out by my family--a widow living with a gay couple does look pretty strange. 

I relocated to Chicago, halfway between my childhood home and my family friends on the East Coast, and was roaming around Italy, telling myself I was researching a travel piece, when Mom died. A decades-old diagnosis of cancer had finally caught up with her. I couldn't bring myself to go to the funeral. The last time Mom and I talked, we had argued. It was about something so trivial and stupid I can't even remember what provoked it, now, but it was one of those trivial arguments that takes place because of years of important stuff that's never been hashed-out. My mom's relationship with Mulder at the same time she was married to Dad... the fact that she hadn't told me the truth about my parentage, and probably never would have if it hadn't been for Uncle Alex... the weight of her disapproval because I wasn't as, I don't know, as tough as she was... it was all there, hiding behind that petty squabble. Mulder wrote to me and chewed me out for not coming, and I couldn't think of anything to write in reply. For a good many years after that, Uncle Alex was the only parent I spoke to regularly.

Then one day I felt like a homing beacon had been switched on. I moved to Seattle, but that wasn't good enough. I needed to go back to Kroeber. I fought it for over a year--my partner, Lisa, fought it, too, all our life together had been elsewhere--but, eventually, I had to give in. I had to go home. Even though it was too late.

Two years ago, Mulder had died. After a long and adventurous life of chasing monsters, being tortured, getting shot, and who knows what else, he slipped away in his sleep, at Uncle Alex's side. He was gone but still warm when his partner woke and found him.

Uncle Alex wrote to me, a long letter, telling me all about it, telling me not to fly home. There wouldn't be a big funeral, just a few old friends gathering to inter Mulder's ashes beside Mom and Dad. John Byers stopped by on his way back east, told me about the funeral service, how it had been him and Frohike and Langly, John Doggett, Jennie Morton and a few other people from the town. And Uncle Alex. The picture he painted of Uncle Alex haunted me--an old man with one arm living by himself in a house that had once held five people--and so did his parting words, delivered quietly, gravely, undramatically, like everything he had to say.

"You should go home."

So I'm standing here over the headstone that marks the grave of my family. Dana Scully Skinner, Walter Sergei Skinner, and in between them, not separating them but bringing them together, Fox William Mulder. I can hardly see because I'm crying so hard, but I think there's room for one more name to be carved on the stone. Someday. I stoop down and lay a huge bundle of roses on the grave, red, white, and pink ones, and I just lean against the cold granite, unable to get up.

"Emmalissa."

I would know that low, raspy voice anywhere. The voice that soothed my nightmares, that drove away the demons and brought in the light. Probably the first voice I ever heard, considering it belonged to the person who fed and changed and held and talked to me from the very start.

And I know the touch of that hand on my shoulder--hard, heavy, unyielding, but so gentle. I turn my head just enough to see the black leather glove. Always black leather.

"Vassilissa--"

I shoot to my feet and turn around, throwing myself into his arms without looking. He staggers a little, but his arms go around me and he holds me tight, kissing my hair and whispering pet names in Russian.

When I can finally let go, I step back and look at him. His hair is snow white. He's leaning on a cane with his good hand. His face is wrinkled and he's wearing a mustache, white as his hair. But his eyes--his eyes haven't changed. The solemn green eyes of the man who brought me into the world.

"I've missed you, Uncle Alex."

He kisses my cheek. "It's all right now, Emmalissa. You're home."

***

end

  
Archived: September 23, 2001 


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